


Deliberate Exchange

by BrideofCrixus



Category: Bane - Fandom, Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Drugs, F/M, I'm sure something will offend but please enjoy xoxo, Sex, Sex in many forms, Violence, rape/forced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 54,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24517450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus
Summary: Elka Green is at work the morning the Exchange. She is one of the hostages pulled onto the motorcycles and not released. Elka is married to a conservative judge, in a loveless marriage, there's all sorts of drugs, sex and violence and political references/quotes that could offend, I hope you enjoy, xoxo I don't own any of these characters etc.
Relationships: Bane (DCU)/Original Female Character(s), Talia al Ghul/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 40
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

Elka Green climbed the steps of the Exchange building, her eighteen hundred-dollar Gucci heels sounded in staccato clicks on the pitted and well traversed steps of the Exchange. 

She tossed her hair back and adjusted the silk scarf that was loosely wrapped around her slim neck. Elka’s dark blonde hair fell long past her shoulders. 

A sharp breeze blew in her direction, and a single tendril of her macadamia nut oiled hair caught in the loose knot of her scarf. As the wind died down, the single strand of warm blonde hair pulled free of her scalp and settled in the silken valleys of the designer fabric. 

Elka paused at the top of the steps when she heard someone call her name.

“Elka, hey Elka!”

She forced her lips into a welcoming smile as Jerry Reynolds jogged over to her. 

“Hey Elka, how was your weekend?”

“Good morning Jerry, it was pleasant. Thank you for asking.”

Jerry ran a manicured hand through his seventy-five-dollar haircut. Elka started walking again and kept her matte lipstick smile fixed in place as she headed in the direction of an organic coffee cart.

Jerry kept pace and prattled on about his weekend, completely oblivious to Elka’s disinterest. She struggled to not roll her eyes as Jerry rattled off story after adventure about his wild weekend. 

Elka’s smile turned genuine when Albert Phinney pressed a white lid on a recycled paper cup and passed it to her as she walked up. “Good morning Mrs. Green, I hope your weekend was well,” he added as she accepted the hot cup from his hands. 

Albert watched her intently as she took a sip of the steaming soy concoction. She smiled warmly when the sweet espresso flooded her mouth and coated her taste buds.

“Today, it’s a soy hazelnut macchiato with a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg.”

Elka took another sip as Albert whispered that he had added some light agave syrup. Monday through Friday, Albert made Elka a mystery espresso. It was a tradition that had started more than seven years prior and showed no signs of stopping unless one of them ceased to live.

It had been Elka’s first day at the Exchange, she had started on the lowest part of the totem, barely clinging to its wooden splinters. She had been obscenely early for her first day, not many people had been around. Albert had been brewing coffee and unwrapping and arranging sweet pastries and Bavarian cream filled delicacies onto plastic platters.  


Elka had straightened the stiff collar of her stark white blouse and pinstriped blazer as she approached Albert’s coffee cart. He had offered her a warm smile and didn’t tell her that he wasn’t quite set up for business yet when he saw her nerves peeking out from behind her statuesque and stoic facade. 

Elka stood a little over 5’8 and in her Jimmy’s, she came in just a hair under six feet. Albert’s smile broadened when Elka couldn’t decide on a coffee and held up a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand to pause her indecisive litany. 

“Allow me to make you a drink not on the menu,” he had whispered in a low conspiratorial tone and bustled about steaming soy milk and adding an amber colored sweet syrup. 

Elka had smiled gratefully and accepted that first drink which started the long-running weekly tradition of Albert creating her morning coffee. She always abstained from one of the tempting and delicious looking buttery pastries. Every great once in a while, Albert would top one of her morning espressos with whipped cream and fat light-brown raw sugar crystals.

Elka put a few dollars in the battered paper tip cup and headed to the large revolving doors of the Exchange with Jerry hot on her highfalutin shiny, leather heels. 

Elka breathed a sigh of relief when Jerry said he’d catch up with her later and hopped into an already packed elevator to head to the bustling seventh floor. She casually waved at him and continued in her preferred solitary fashion of the carpeted floor of the Exchange. 

She sipped at her macchiato and reveled in the sweet coffee as she readied her mind for the day. 

Elka was Mrs. Elka Alsina Green. Married just under four years to Justice Calvin Patrick Green of the Supreme Court. 

They had met when Elka had been a key witness in a defense case against a legal firm CEO caught up in a masterful Ponzi Scheme. Judge Green had waited until the verdict had come in and had slammed his gavel down before asking her out for dinner.

In their short marriage, Elka’s bullish behavior and competitive drive led to her being promoted to her current position of an Information Systems Analyst Supervisor. Her intense focus at the Exchange led to people loving or hating her, unfortunately Jerry was head over heels for her, smitten beyond belief, despite Elka’s multiple reminders of her marriage.  


She hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings by adding that she held zero attraction towards him.

Elka swirled the coffee in the dull green paper cup as she stalked through the Exchange and paused to say hello or offer a few passing words to several colleagues. After she finished the coffee, she fished a pack of gum from her burgundy Louis Vuitton bag. Soon the sweet and artificial peppermint coated her tongue and chased away her coffee breath.  


Elka adjusted the shiny plastic badge over her heart as a familiar and delightful nervous energy filled her body, leaving a vast tingling in its wake that danced through her limbs as she waited for the opening bell to ring.

As Elka’s heartbeat increased and she snapped her gum faster, Jerry had remained at the Exchange entrance and looked down at the older man running a stiff bristled brush over the tops of his shoes. 

Jerry could nearly see his reflection in the buffed surface of his shoes. 

“You can’t short the stock because Bruce Wayne goes to a party,” Jerry said loudly to the man sitting next to him. The man whose name Elka couldn’t seem to remember. Dennis.

“Wayne coming back is change. Change is either good or bad. I vote bad.” The man who Jerry was looking down upon in his current sitting position as well as in life was a very loyal  
man with five grown daughters. Esau pretended to be every part the simple-minded man who was shining the shoes of the pretentious, all in hopes for a few crisp bills and shiny coins to rain down around him. 

Esau continued to work the brush over the tops of Jerry’s gleaming shoes, urging a glow to swim to the surface. As Jerry and Dennis continued to discuss Bruce Wayne, Esau let his eyes wander over to his black nondescript backpack which held a loaded automatic weapon.

“On what basis?” Dennis asked.

“I flipped a coin,” Jerry answered casually before adding. “Come on let’s go scalping,” he said as he tossed a fresh five-dollar bill to land next to Esau‘s leg. 

Esau watched Jerry adjust and smooth down his royal purple tie that stood out proudly against his bright blue and white striped shirt.

While Elka covered a deep yawn, Scott Carthwright pulled a creased ten dollar bill out of his pocket when the delivery guy from Antonio’s, a stellar delicatessen, walked up with a brown paper bag.

Scott opened the bag and pulled out the parchment wrapped sandwich that was supposed to be a mortadella on wheat with a fat pile of pungent pepperoncini and thick rings of Vidalia onion. He was looking forward to the olive oil and balsamic dressing that would soak the bread and impregnate it with the progeny of sweet, bitter, spicy, and savory.  
Scott let out a dramatic exasperated sigh and looked at the delivery guy who sported sharp features and a hooked nose. “It says rye, I said no rye man.”

The salt and pepper haired delivery man, Joshua, flicked his eyes over to the clock before his gaze landed on Scott’s plastic badge and ID number, G13689.

While Scott continued to bitch about his sandwich, on the marble landing of the carved staircase, Karl pushed a wooden handled mop along the floor after a pair of traders walked past. His beige monochromatic clothing made him almost disappear in the sea of ostentatious bustling busybodies with their platinum money clips, excessive caffeine consumption and high blood pressure. 

Karl glanced down at his sunny yellow mop bucket filled with sudsy water.

Submerged in the soapy water was a matching automatic weapon to Esau’s, which laid in deadly dormancy, waiting to take lives.

Elka glanced up at the large clock and made her way to her glass-walled corner office, which was sprawling and spacious, she smiled at the fresh peonies her secretary Janice had left on the corner of her desk. 

No sooner had Elka taken her seat and booted up her computer, when her life changed irreparably by a masked man in a leather jacket.

The metal detectors began to blare their alarms as Bane walked into the lobby of the Exchange, armed guards milled about with their federally issued .40 caliber handguns. 

Bane’s broad shoulders were encased in a well-worn and creased leather jacket. DCS Downtown Courier Service, was emblazoned across the back in dull brick red letters.

Bane’s thick and heavily corded muscular neck and body were obscured by the fire engine red helmet that drew the attention of Sandra, a full-time member of the Exchange’s security team. 

Sandra approached Bane and began to recite her repetitive litany for newcomers to the Exchange.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and she struggled to not roll her eyes in irritation at yet another person not being able to read the sign that clearly stated to remove all headwear, from hat to motorcycle helmet. 

“Hey rookie, lose the helmet. We need faces for camera.”

“Come on,” Sandra managed before the red helmet was off Bane’s head and smashing into her face. The bridge of her nose exploded, and she saw bright blue stars before losing consciousness. 

She would awake in a narrow emergency room gurney a while later, a plastic IV line in one arm, keeping the pain down to a dull roar.

In a brutal display of startling power, Bane moved to the right and swung the helmet in an arc, catching another guard in his forward momentum. He dodged left and avoided the next man’s reaching arm and gun. Bane slipped around the man’s extended arm and forced him to discharge his weapon before dropping him to the ground. 

Bane looked around at the fallen guards, his veins and arteries swelled and became engorged with lethal toxicity. His body moved with the feral grace of felines stalking in the tall brush of the Serengeti.

“This is a stock exchange, there’s no money you can steal,” Jerry said in a tone that still held the repugnant tone of his obnoxious silver-spooned upbringing. 

“Really? Then why are you people here?” Bane rebutted quickly and pulled Jerry roughly by the neck to a nearby desk. Bane slammed Jerry’s soft featured face onto the desk’s paper  
cluttered surface and ripped the plastic access badge from his chest.

Dennis tried to sink into his seat and disappear off of Bane’s radar, his sweating fingers struggled to not drop Bane’s red motorcycle helmet onto the ground. He felt like he was going to piss his pants, sphincter tightening. His stomach threatened to reject his liquid latte breakfast, acidic bile burned at the back of his throat.  


While the metal detectors continued to blare their alarms as the masked group of men stormed the lobby. The masked men were all heavily armed and swarmed the offices and took up post by the elevators. 

One of the men sprayed a line of bullets in the ceiling and the abrupt gunfire quieted a lot of screams.

Another anonymous man lifted a bullhorn to his masked mouth and began to speak. His voice reverberated through the lobby and reached Elka’s ears as she crawled under her desk and hugged her knees to her chest, through the glass walls, Elka could see that Janice had taken the same position under her own desk. 

“Disobedience will be punished by death,” the masked man began and in a brutal display of startling power, grabbed one of the crying interns who was wailing incessantly and pulled her to her feet. He swung the bullhorn in an arc, catching the crying woman in mid-sob and knocking her unconscious to the floor. 

“Cooperation and silence are what will allow you to retain your life.” Elka peeked around the corner of her desk as the masked man looked around at the people shaking in fear, the veins and arteries in his muscular neck swelled and became engorged with lethal toxicity. His body moved with the feral grace of felines stalking their unsuspecting prey in the tall brush.

Elka ducked back under her desk as the man’s gaze took to sweeping across the faces of the scared men and women standing in trembling huddles. They were corralled by their own fear, nearly paralyzed with the thought that the next bullet fired was going to kiss them between their shoulder blades. 

Elka took a sharp intake of breath and nearly felt the weight of the masked terrorist’s eyes pass over where she was hidden from view. She flinched when she heard his voice grow in volume as he moved down the hallway, his men had spread out and were dragging people from their offices and impromptu hiding spots. 

Elka pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply through her nose, she tried to remember all the jargon her yoga instructor spouted about finding a place of calm and being able to breathe away anxiety. She closed her eyes; her heartbeat was pounding in her ears with a dull roar and she couldn’t shake the image of the masked man. A short film on perpetual repeat, danced behind her eyelids of his predatory stalking around the Exchange floor, his eyes found every weakness among the hostage masses, from their red blood cells to their very warm, wet core. 

Elka risked another peek around her desk just as the armed man did another visual sweep. His eyes landed on Elka when her face appeared around the mahogany desk.  
Elka found herself unable to move, trapped under his warm caramel colored eyes.

As the dangerous man approached her with light footfalls despite his heavy boots, he watched her expression fill with fear. He smiled behind his mask as he closed the distance between them, walking towards her with deliberate and painful slowness.

He stopped in front of her, “stand up,” he ordered and pointed to the floor in front of him. He watched her struggle to stand and found he barely had to drop his eyes to return her wide-eyed stare. His eyes fell to her plastic badge indicating her supervisorial capacity.

The next few moments were a blur for Elka, she was startled back to reality by the feel of his massive hand enclose around her bicep. 

From the closeness of his proximity, his voice caused her stomach to clench and her mouth went dry. 

“How much longer does the program need?” the intricate metal asked man asked Esau, with his eyes completely trained on Elka and the rapid and rise and fall of her chest.

“Eight minutes but they cut the fiber, cells working,” Esau said as he watched the progress of the computer program weave its way into the monetary network. 

She flinched when she heard his voice call again to the man that had until not too long ago, shining shoes. 

“Time to go mobile,” sounded the masked man’s musically toned voice as he closed a large hand around her upper arm. From the closeness of his proximity, his voice caused her stomach to clench and her mouth went dry. 

The next few moments were a blur for Elka, she was startled back to reality by the feel of his massive hand yank her around by her bicep.

Elka heard the shouting of the masked man’s counterparts and fresh gunfire erupted as she was pulled towards the exit doors of the Exchange.

“Everybody up!” a deep male voice shouted and was followed up by a spray of bullets. Some hit yielding flesh with a meaty smack. 

“You two, move.”

Bane paused in front of Dennis and pulled at the red helmet that he was clutching like newborn stock options. 

“Thank you,” Bane said in a haunting and melodic tone as he pulled the helmet from Dennis’s sweating hands. 

Elka seemed to wake up as the physically imposing man pulled her towards a line of waiting motorcycles. 

She began a futile attempt to pull free of his grasp. 

He didn’t audibly respond to her feeble attempt at resistance, instead he tightened his grip until he forced a hiss of pain from her lips and yanked her towards the closest bike.  


Bane didn’t relinquish his stranglehold on Elka’s arm, even as he swung his leg over the bike and settled on the padded seat. He spared a glance at Elka before he pulled her to perch in front of him.

Her fears were renewed when he started the bike’s engine and began to let it idle as the other men with him gathered the remaining hostages at the exit doors and got on the bikes as they gunned the engines to life.

Outside, SWAT and police milled about and argued about the best approach to the terrorists. 

Foley and Blake had their firearms leveled at the Exchange as one of the rooftop snipers squinted and called out. “I’ve got something.”

“Steady….” Foley called. 

“Steady.”

The hostages started down the steps of the Exchange and the security chief shouted over the growing Gotham Police Department’s adrenaline buzz. 

“Hold your fire, they’ve got hostages.” 

In the midst of the shouting, Elka tried to slide out of Bane’s grasp, she almost squealed with victory when the toe of her shoe hit the ground. Her joy was fleeting as Bane wrapped a powerful arm around her and pulled her back until she was flush against his chest. She was forced to shift her body until the smooth, metal gas tank was cool against the inside of her trembling thighs. 

As Bane and his men tore through the city on their motorcycles, they dropped their hostages one at a time. 

The police force erupted in chaos and officers tried left and right for a clean shot at any and all of the terrorists, while trying desperately to avoid the innocents.

Some of the unlucky guys and gals landed poorly and Gotham’s emergency room had a slew of broken wrists and ankles to grit-filled road rash.

The original objective had been to take temporary hostages in order to ensure a safe escape from the Exchange.

As Bane urged the bike’s speedometer higher, Elka squeezed her eyes shut.

Bane kept his grip on her strong and unyielding, through the razor thin vents of his mask, he could detect the sensual aroma of a high-end parfum, sold only in overpriced blue glass bottles. 

The fragrance held the sweet and citrus undertones of rosehips and bergamot.

Bane inhaled a lungful of the subtle fragrance as he continued to maneuver the motorcycle through the city.

As he steered them further from the Exchange, Elka began to fall still under her body’s shock response.

“Where are you taking me?”

Bane was genuinely surprised when Elka’s voice sounded above the wind rushing past them. He responded immediately and without delay as soon as her last spoken syllable had tumbled from her lips. 

His single word response caused her vocal cords to temporarily cease to function. 

“Home.”


	2. Ice Cream & Money

Elka's blood seemed to run cold as his single spoken word penetrated her ears and drilled to the center of her grey matter.

"Home? His home? Where the hell is his home?" her mind whirred and she glanced down at the pavement passing swiftly under the tires of the quick motorcycle.

From his vantage point, Bane saw her turn her head to either side, he assumed she was weighing the damage she might incur if she attempted to leap free.

Elka's breath left her body in a sudden rush as his arm tightened around her waist in an unbreakable iron-clad grip. Her throat burned with acidic bile from her morning coffee, the 

hazelnut macchiato was smooth and creamy when she had consumed it not too earlier, but now it held a stagnant bitter quality that coated the inside of her mouth. She dropped her hands to his massive forearm and tried uselessly to pull at his heavily muscled extremity.

"Hold yourself still Miss Green, I have no tolerance for disobedience."

Bane's voice reached her over the sound of the wind whistling past her face. Elka stopped scratching at the leather encasing his forearm and grew still.

Bane strained his ears as her rebuttal slipped from her lips, he narrowed his eyes, unsure of whether he had her correctly. Above the sound of the wind, the whine of the engine and his adrenaline-fueled heartbeat, he thought he had heard her say, "It's Mrs. Green."

For the remaining duration of the speedy motorcycle ride through Gotham City, Elka shifted her eyes to the left and right as Bane escaped the pursuing Gotham City Police Department.

She felt a start when they passed the exit that would take her home, she felt a fleeting sadness for her pet fish.

Oscar the Oscar fish, her husband had teasingly awarded her the title of being the World's Most Unimaginative Chooser of Pet Names.

Elka stared down at the motorcycle's speedometer as her mind returned briefly to Oscar with his vibrant canary yellow scales and large black onyx eyes that glittered with emptiness.

She watched the speedometer's white plastic needle drop as the tyrannical masked leader of the other thugs, steered the bike off the highway and down into Gotham City's sewer system.

Elka tried to remain still as the masked man brought the bike to a halt next to a few industrial grey diesel engines trucks that would belch noxious fumes from their large exhaust pipes. The monochromatic truck's motors sat quiet and cold in the dim overhead lighting.

Bane swung his powerful leg off the bike and then pulled Elka roughly from where she was perched on the gas tank. Elka fought to not struggle as he half-carried her down a dim segment of the damp sewer maze.

His arm was tight across her midsection and nearly compressed her sternum, she tried to let her feet touch the ground and match his long strides but quickly realized it was an exercise in futility.

The toes of her Gucci heels kissed the damp concrete and small scratches appeared on the brilliant surface of the shoes made entirely of money with some crystal accents.

As Bane continued to pull her down the sewer tunnel, Elka tried to keep her breathing slow and even. Her stomach contents were being squeezed under his vice-like grip and she closed her eyes to keep the threat of vomiting at bay.

Bane's leather jacket encased arm was firmly wrapped around her midsection. The worn fabric of his sleeve caressed her silken blouse and he could feel the effort of her breathing as he continued down the twisted tunnels.

"When will Cal find out I've been kidnapped? How long till he finds me? Will I be killed or ransomed?" Elka's mind shouted questions at her and she nearly answered audibly.

"Will Calvin even come looking for me?" she asked herself.

Calvin Patrick Green, a staunch conservative and as obsessed with Faux News as a certain cinematic gal who boiled a bunny. Their marriage was still young but as calm as a torrential tropical storm.

While Elka's mind worked furiously in trying to memorize the walls bleeding fat droplets of condensation and any possible escape routes, Bane's own mind was assaulting him with questions, asked with a tone similar to those in Gitmo's enhanced interrogations.

Bane's eyes narrowed as question after question bounced around in the front of his mind.

"When did you decide to deviate from the specific orders? Have you forgotten your place? Your part in the destruction of Gotham City?"

He frowned and renewed his firm hold on Elka as he mentally rebutted. "She may have access to the internal structure of the Gotham Exchange, information that could prove invaluable."

Bane's mind immediately volleyed back. "Esau can hack into any system, he set up a crippling virus in the FBI's database because he was bored. There were eight supervisors on the Exchange floor, why did you pick her?"

He clenched his jaw until a bolt of pain shot up the side of his face, the ragged nerve-endings were soon soothed away by the narcotic inhalant.

Bane's mind didn't give him a chance to reply before berating him further. "Why did you deviate from the plan? What are you going to do with this woman?"

Elka's eyes rapidly sought every corner when she felt the masked man's heavy footsteps slow in front of a large blue metal door that was adorned with multiple dents and dings.

Her throat seemed paralyzed and her chest constricted as she watched her kidnapper slide a key into the lock and pull the door open.

One of Elka's envy inducing heels fell free of her foot when she renewed her struggling as he pulled her into the room. Bane's anger flared at her blatant disobedience of his earlier order.

He released his arm suddenly and she fell to the unforgiving chilly floor. She let out a low hiss when her right knee hit the ground hard.

Elka rubbed a hand on her knee and reached out for her fallen shoe.

"Hey," she shouted when Bane intercepted her reach and plucked her shoe from the ground. The feminine and delicate shoe looked tiny in his large hands, the lustrous, smooth surface was in stark contrast to the rough skin of his hands and fingertips.

Elka climbed to her feet and watched with open shock as Bane snapped the heel off the shoe before discarding to a random corner.

Her next protests died at her lips when he spoke to her in a haunting melodic tone. "I will not explain again that I abhor disobedience, your neck will snap with similar ease."

Elka scolded herself for flinching when he closed the distance between them and ripped her plastic Gotham Exchange ID badge off her blouse. The toughened pads of his fingertips brushed briefly against the silk of her scarf, snagging the fabric against his jagged cuticles.

Elka took a step backwards before even consciously realizing, Bane's brow furrowed, and he grasped her upper arm and yanked her towards him.

While Elka remained frozen under Bane's close proximity and heavy stare, several of the armed men who had been present at the Exchange heist, were deep in discussion about Bane's extra felonious act.

One man that was nearly a head taller than most pulled a plastic bottle from inside his jacket and took a long drink of the clear liquid. He passed the bottle to another anonymous man with aquatic colored eyes as he asked. "Did you see where he took that woman?"

The man with bright sea-green eyes shook his head as the third man spoke. "The utility room on L3."

"Let's go," the tall man said and led the others like the perverted Pied Piper.

Bane had shut and locked the utility room door on L3 as the trio of men were discussing his personal spoils.

He had wordlessly released her arm and swiftly exited the room with her plastic ID badge. Elka had remained staring at the closed door long after her masked captor's departure.  
Bane had gone directly from the utility room turned prison cell to find Esau.

Bane found Esau typing an alphanumeric sequence into a bank account located in Zurich. Esau looked up and actively listened when Bane passed him Elka's ID badge and began to speak.

"Tell me about this woman."

Esau immediately sprang into action when Bane remained standing, regarding him silently as his fingers flew over the keyboard.

Esau glanced over his shoulder before returning his eyes to the computer screen. He began to recite in a steady staccato tone the information he had procured.

"Elka Alsina Green, married to Supreme Court Justice Calvin Patrick James."

Bane listened as Esau read Elka's DMV history of multiple speeding tickets and through the public records of her marriage to Judge Patrick Green and following purchase of a three-bedroom loft in the very affluent bleeding red, wet center of the Gotham City privileged.

As Esau continued to read from the bright screen, over in the utility room, Elka looked up at the sharp sound of a key twisting into her door's titanium lock. She stood when the three men entered the room, all dressed in the dark colors of the earth. The tallest of the trio stepped forward and rubbed a grimy hand against his crotch as he leered at Elka for a few moments, his eyes running up and down the length of her statuesque form, before speaking in a scratchy voice.

"Looks like the job was a success, what do you guy's think? Should we enjoy the prize?"

Elka frowned as the other men joined in with deep laughter that caused a concoction of anxiety and anger to well up inside her.

"You need to understand you may be hurt, but it will be limited to just the physical," Elka repeated in her head and squared her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes and looked over the three men who were all now staring at her as her mind rapidly spoke, she winced at the volume of her inner thoughts. "Which one is the weakest? You need to try and harm at least one of them, don't let them take you without returning the favor in blood."

"What do you think her cunt tastes like?" the man on the right asked. Elka's eyes shot to him and his scraggly beard and hard sea green eyes. She turned her head to the left, her sweaty hair sticking to her forehead when the man on the left answered.

"I bet this one tastes like money," he said and licked his cracked lips with deliberate slowness before adding. "Money and goddamn French vanilla ice cream."

"You fuckers stand back, I get to go first," the tall man said and took a step towards her. Elka blew out a low breath and stood her ground, she mentally congratulated herself for not flinching when he began to move.

"Why do you get to go first?" the green-eyed man asked and caught the tall one by the elbow.

"Seniority," the tall man said in a low, menacing tone as he shook his elbow free and took another step towards Elka.

She stepped backwards and raised both hands in front of her, "wait, please. I have money, a lot of money and I will give you a blank check," Elka stammered. Her fear spiked when the tall man didn't stop his forward momentum.

"I'll take that check after I'm done fucking you," he said with a leer. He got a laugh out of the other two men as Elka took another step back, she knew the wall had to be close.

Elka kicked off her other heel and tried to keep upright on her trembling legs, her eyes widened when the tall man pulled a large buck knife from a hip sheath. He waved the blade in front of him, eviscerating the air with the wickedly sharp steel.

"I'm going to open you up cunt, and then we'll have some fun."

Elka's confusion lifted and she had a startling moment of clarity and summoned her inner Pavarotti as she inhaled and filled her lungs with the damp air. Her scream was high and piercing as it radiated from the utility room to echo through tunnels of churning water and stagnant droplets splashing on grimy concrete.

The tall man's hand curled into a fist and his row of bony knuckles made contact with her lower belly. Elka's breath rushed from her lungs and she doubled over with a low grunt. 

The contents of her stomach soon found itself evacuating her stomach in a hurry. The hazelnut macchiato had devolved from the hue of warm French toast drowning in thick, maple syrup to a sour grey after mixing with her brilliant green bile.

Elka's opera worthy scream died as the scant remains of an organic bran muffin landed on the ground in front of the tall man's boots.

"Goddammit," he shouted as he stepped back and looked down at Elka in disgust as she coughed, trying to breathe and vomit simultaneously. Her stomach ached and convulsed as her breath slowly returned. Her breath rattled as she kept her eyes squeezed shut, large tears rolling down her flushed and sweaty cheeks.

The tall man gripped Elka's chin and forced her to look up at him. She kept her eyes closed until his voice hissed dangerously close to her face. Elka wrinkled her nose in repugnance as his words were exhaled on a foul cloud of acrid onion and potato vodka.

"Open your eyes."

Elka remained motionless despite the fear that was making her hands shake.

"I said open your fucking eyes or I will slice off your privileged eyelids."

Elka slowly opened her eyes and squinted up at the tall sneering man.

As she struggled to not look away, her scream, before it had quickly died. Reached Bane's ears despite the distance he was from the utility room. The inhalant that kept his chronic pain glossed over with a soothing narcotic web also enhanced his other senses. His hearing caught her scream and he left Esau with orders to deliver all information procured on Mrs. Elka Green to his desk.

Esau watched Bane abruptly leave, his walk purposeful, his gait already resembling a charging, infuriated Brahma bull.

As Bane stalked down the wanly lit tunnels, back in the utility room, the tall man backhanded Elka. She felt the warm trickle of blood began to roll down her upper lip. The tall man released her chin and slapped her again, he chuckled lowly when she crawled backwards and slumped against the wall.

Elka's entire face felt three times too big and every bone seemed to radiate and ache in its own unique painful note.

She was too wrapped up in her own suffering to notice the metal door being kicked in by a heavy booted foot.

Elka was too distracted by the shooting pains that started at the tip of her nose and seemed to penetrate her skull and tickle her brain stem, to witness Bane entering the room and efficiently ensnare and snap the neck of the anonymous deviant with cool eyes that reflected the colors of Atlantis.

She was too preoccupied with the coppery taste of blood coating her lips, the macabre makeup of the living dead, to further witness the man who had looked at her like an expensive artisanal double scoop in a chocolate dipped waffle cone. Elka missed the man have his spine contorted and finally snap under the immense pressure and strength of   
Bane's hands.

The tall man had whirled around at Bane's explosive entrance and held out his knife in a defensive stance as the second lifeless body flopped to the ground.

Bane glared at the man that was no longer standing tall in his presence. He lunged forward with the knife, Bane dodged it easily and threw out a sharp right hook. The once tallest man in the room, moved his chin back just enough and was only grazed by Bane's fist.

He shook his head and swung the knife in a downward arc, Bane leaned back and caught the man's descending wrist. The audible snap of the man's wrist and the meaty sound of splintered bone giving birth through ripped skin sounded in the chilly room.

The man's screams shook Elka back to a conscious reality and plane of existence and she opened her eyes just in time to see Bane close his thick fingers around the front of the man's throat and apply brutal pressure.

Elka felt her mouth run dry and her lungs lose their breath as her metallic masked captor's fingers disappeared into the vulnerable flesh around his prominent Adam's Apple and yanked backwards. His now closed fist pulled back, wrapped around soft tissue, pliable ivory colored cartilage and darker matter clotted under his fingernails.

By the time the masked man was walking towards her, pausing to wipe his hands on the newly deceased man's relatively clean shirt, Elka was sitting a tad more upright and pushed her hair out of her eyes to squint up at the man who had just casually taken three lives with about as much effort as swatting at a fly.

As Elka sat on the chilly concrete floor, staring up at the murderous man with the rigid metallic mask, across the city, Justice Calvin Green, Elka's husband, was listening to the lead member of the prosecution team end their closing arguments.


	3. I Think it's Worse

Justice Green clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he listened to the fashionable top prosecutor finish their litany against a farmer that hailed from the Midwest and had killed several doctors and patients at an abortion clinic. 

Justice Green believed that the farmer Gerald Parks was completely justified in his actions, he practically had to bite his tongue in half to keep from yelling at the prosecuting attorney who was trying for the maximum penalty.

Earlier in the week, Calvin had found himself having to fight from nodding in agreement when the defense was citing Parks staunch and zealous Christianity as an assertion of a good and decent character as well as grandfather to twenty-four. 

Justice Green’s mind was seething when the prosecutor cited Parks’ unapologetic statement following his gunning down and brutal murder of two doctors, three nurses, one tech and three patients. 

Justice Green had practically masturbated with wild abandon under his thick black robes when Gerald Parks’ statement had been read aloud by the prosecution and entered into evidence. 

“Today I sent members of Satan’s Army back to Hell, where they’ll reside under the watchful eyes of the Devil and be damned to the Lake of Fire for killin’ babies. God has sent me as an ambassador to save the souls of the heathens and heretics and teach them about merciful God and his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. God is love.”

As the prosecutor paused to take a sip of high-end water from a thumb print smudged glass, back in the sewers, Bane stared down at Elka as she wiped her nose. She winced down at the line of fresh red blood that decorated the back of her hand. 

His adrenaline-fueled body tingled with the rush and exertion of taking the three men’s lives. Each of his exhales held a ragged edge as he watched Elka sniff hard and spit a mouthful of blood on the cold floor. 

Elka licked her lips, the coppery taste of blood and bile coating her tongue. The masked man’s sudden and melodic words rained down upon her. Each of his syllables had razor sharp claws and musical potency that bridged his sudden interrogation. 

“Do you support your husband’s statements on the Clean Energy Bill? Are you aware of the organizations he donated to last year?” 

Bane narrowed his eyes in the short space of silence as Elka processed his words, he watched her eyes dart to either side of him as he peppered her with more questions. His mind replayed the information Esau had read to him from the glowing computer screen about Elka and her Supreme Court Justice husband. 

“Do you also support his approval of off-shore drilling and the displacement and destruction of wildlife without a thought to the detrimental effects to the ecosystem? When you joined him at the five thousand dollar a plate auction for stopping the Arctic oil drilling, was your applause genuine? Was the check real?”

Elka shook her head at her kidnapper’s questions and chuckled lightly. 

Bane’s anger surged. “Do you think you are safe because you live in a gated community with a judge for a husband?”

“I think it’s worse,” Elka thought as she looked up at her abductor. His warm eyes glowed with fury at her impertinence, the inky black pupils dilated in the low light as he stared down at her.

“What the hell do you want with me?” she finally asked, tired of his wordless scrutiny. 

“Direct and unlimited access at the Exchange,” Bane answered and tossed her ID badge towards her. 

Elka watched the plastic-coated ID card fall to the ground and click on its rounded edge. She stared at her photographed image for a second before returning her gaze back up to the imposing man in front of her. 

“Look, I have no control over my husband’s ideals or motivations. I also don’t have nearly the Exchange access as you seem to think I do. It isn’t even remotely relevant how my own ideas align or don’t align with Calvin’s,” Elka said tersely before adding. “What are you going to do with me?” 

Bane stared down at her; the matte black hands of her wristwatch ticked in the chasm of silence. He narrowed his eyes at her, “that is not the current topic of discussion.”

Elka scoffed and spit dark blood and thick strings of mucus onto the cold floor. The saliva splashed on the toe of his scuffed steel-toed boots. “Just leave me alone, I don’t want to listen to your goddamn wheezing anymore,” she said and rubbed a hand across her tired eyes. 

An involuntary cry fell from Elka’s lips when Bane’s irritation at her casual impudence boiled over and he reached down and gripped her upper arms. He pulled her roughly to her bare feet and his words emerged through his mask as a musical hiss. 

“Shall you listen further to my wheezing as I finish what those men started?” he asked and nodded at the three fallen still warm corpses. 

“Fuck you, you’re no better,” Elka spit and struggled to not flinch as his grip tightened and he brought his face closer. Her body betrayed her, and she shuddered as his words emerged on an exhale. She could feel his breath brush across her face through the front of his coiled mask, due to their close proximity. 

“Do you believe that attitude will help improve your chances of living past today?” 

“It doesn’t matter what I say or do, you already have your plan in place. I’m just another person you hold disdain for, you goddamn judgmental bully.”

Bane gave a low melodically mechanical growl and pushed her backwards too fast for her body and equilibrium to process. Elka winced when her hip hit the aluminum frame of the military issued green cot. She was distracted by the startling ache in her hip as Bane closed the distance between them and half-lifted her until he could shift her fully onto the squeaky cot. 

Elka tried to turn her head out of the way and slap at the masked abductor’s hand. She clawed at the front of his mask, her short-manicured nails with their glossy burgundy polish, scratched at the metallic coils over the lower part of his face. 

Bane closed one hand around her neck, and she dropped both hands to his wrist, her nails biting into the skin between his gloves and leather sleeve. Crescent moons appeared in his flesh under her fingernails and filled with bright blood as his other hand dropped to the hem of her charcoal grey pencil skirt and with a swift upward movement, ripped the skirt apart, exposing Elka’s long legs and expensive silk lingerie.

Bane’s eyes settled briefly on the top of her beige thigh highs that clung to the supple flesh of her lean thighs.

A new wave of fear surged through her and she felt sour sweat blossom under her arms and soak her lower back. “You’re just like the rest them, fuck you,” she spit in a bitter tone.

Elka couldn’t see the smile that twisted his lips under the mask. He moved his hand from the hem of her skirt and casually hooked the thumb in one of his belt loops. “Is that what you’d like?” he whispered.

Her vocal cords were stricken with paralysis.

“Answer me,” he demanded. “Is that what you’d like?” he repeated as he closed his fingertips on the metal pull tab of his zipper. 

She managed to shake her head vigorously.

“What would you like?”

She muttered something too soft and unintelligibly for him to hear.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“I don’t want you to hurt me anymore,” she murmured as she turned her face away. “Please,” she added in a whispered breath. 

He made a spontaneous decision in the following seconds of her speaking while examining her profile. 

He found his eyes traveling the varying chestnut strands of hair as he leaned as close to her as humanly possible without crushing her.

“You wish to remain living?”

Elka nodded.

“Then I require your assistance Mrs. Green,” he answered and reluctantly moved away from her. 

“There’s another room where you can clean up, for now come with me.”

He began to walk to the door and paused when he saw she wasn’t following. He looked back at where she stood frozen in place, afraid to move. He noticed her gaze was fixed on the floor in front of her and as he followed her gaze to the floor, he raked his eyes over her body. 

Blood from the trio of the newly dead had formed a pool that was closing in around her feet. Her chin began to nearly tremble as the puddle of blood and thicker fluids grew closer to her. 

Elka would’ve seen the barely perceptible softening in his eyes if she had been looking at him. He walked back to where she remained paralyzed with fear.

“What I would like to do,” he started as she managed to defensively cross her arms, “is to pick you up and move you to a different….spot,” he continued carefully. 

She closed her eyes and gave the slightest of nods. Elka held her breath and dropped her chin to her chest in defeat as he stepped over one of the bodies, his large boots landing in the cooling, wet puddles. Elka managed to suppress an audible gasp as she felt his arms close around her and soon felt her feet leave the ground. 

Looking back, if asked, this was the precise moment where he lost his heart to her and fell forward into love with the overriding stranglehold of lust. The feeling of wrapping her up in his embrace and inhaling his lungs full of her warm scent and bitter fear that emanated from her rattled his senses was almost his undoing. His eye’s vessels dilated as he took a deep breath, he fought the urge to return her to the cot, strip her bare and possess her body as he covered every inch of her bare skin with his touch. 

She stiffened as his arms closed around her and flinched when his voice fell around her, “are you hurt?”

Elka shook her head and winced. “I don’t think too badly, I could use something for the pain.” 

“I’ll consider it,” he said indirectly.

“Do you have my purse? I have something I can take.” 

She frowned thinking of her Louis Vuitton not nestled at her side. Her obscenely priced pursed was at the current moment being clutched to the generous chest of her secretary Janice. 

Janice held a deep devotion to Elka for helping her to arrange the termination of an unwanted pregnancy without her boyfriend finding out. Janice hadn’t wanted the local PD detectives to get their grubby, fact-finding paws all over the embossed burgundy leather of the purse. 

As Janice stroked the slick surface of the purse, back in the sewer system, Elka felt herself becoming overwhelmed at the proximity of her masked captor and the helplessness of being lifted in his arms with her feet dangling in the air. 

He kept a neutral expression even behind his mask, he felt her stiffen in his arms and took two large steps with her tight in his embrace until they were completely clear of the trio of corpses. 

“I’m going to set you down now,” he said lowly, his face so close that she could detect the faintest aroma of a harsh astringent that touched the edges of each of his exhales.

Elka nodded and felt the slightest relief when her feet came back to land firmly on the solid concrete floor. “What now?” she finally asked, somehow summoning the courage to speak in a voice that only barely trembled. 

“We will be exiting this room, do not make a spectacle of yourself.”

Elka barely managed to suppress a flinch when the masked man closed his hand once again around her upper arm and she tried to memorize the dank hallways as he tugged her toward a destination that only he knew. 

As he kept her close in his ironclad grip, across the city in the grand courtroom, Justice Calvin Green was thankful for the long recess for lunch. He left the courtroom to his chambers and slipped out of his robes, he glanced at the clock and hurried to a French Bistro two blocks from the courthouse. 

A smile filled his face when he saw the slender and petite stenographer already seated at their usual table under an ivory umbrella. Calvin knew that she would have already ordered the branzini and had a crisp glass of chardonnay on its way to their table. He glanced at his watch, he had one hundred and twenty-seven minutes to spend with the alluring Kara before heading back to listen to more from the bleeding-heart liberals that composed the entirety of the prosecution team. 

As Calvin and Kara each had a glass of the obscenely priced white wine and delicate fish, across Gotham in the sewers in the utility room on level L3, Bane continued to pull Elka by the upper arm until she tripped over her own feet and crashed heavily to her knees. 

She couldn’t help but whimper helplessly and not even try to stand on her own strength. Bane looked down at her, thinking of the decades in service to Talia looking down upon simpering men and women he’d brought to their knees. 

Deep creases appeared between his eyes that were dripping with a new emotion. The glossy orbs, that held the color of honeyed walnuts, narrowed as felt a faint stirring of concern that his new captive might be injured. Elka’s value had risen significantly when he had learned the family she had married into. 

The man she had married, Chief Justice Calvin Green, was toying around with the idea of running for public office. The Justice’s goal was painted in glossy photo still frames of his brilliant smile, filled with straight white teeth, grinning like an ignorant buffoon, under an A Vote for Judge Green is a Vote for Justice banner.

Bane’s newest thoughts had recalled the similar photos of his polished smile with Elka on his arm. His technological ninja Esau had located a plethora of benefit articles that featured the Justice and his wife at pricey plate settings with real crystal stemware. These events were for conservative men either in political office or eternal campaign running hopefuls. 

Bane recalled the articles accompanied by photos of the affluent couple as he scrutinized the tacky blood in the deep groves of the fleshy webbing between his thumb and forefinger. One photo had connected the obsidian chain between lust and power. When Esau had shown him an enlarged color photo of Justice Green and Elka at a benefit for a fellow Justice, Bane’s nostrils had flared and spoken to his biological roots of clubbing a T-Rex and dragging the carcass back to the fire before dragging the wife to the rocky bedroom. 

The photo had featured the grinning hyena Calvin Green in an expensive silk suit, Bane only saw Elka on the Judge’s right side. 

Elka wore a secret smile and her hair was swept up into a loose delicate bun. A few strands brushed the tops of her shoulders and gave most of the attention to the gown of shimmering pale peach silk.

The gown was cut tastefully at the bodice but left the creamy skin of her décolletage exposed. Bane had trailed his eyes from the top of the dress that was lightly molded to her breasts and then down to where it smoothed over her slim waist and wrapped itself around her hips. The whisper soft fabric skimmed over her thighs and fell to a couple inches above her knees.

The benefit had been hosted by Faux News and two of their top stars were at the ten thousand dollar a plate dinner. The ignorant, ranting Bobbie O’Riley was in a pressed suit made at an American company and his counterpart for the evening was the blubbery, sweaty side show, Rusch Timbaugh. 

Both highly overpaid men had spent the majority of the evening consulting their platinum watches. 

As the rich and powerful rubbed designer-suited elbows, back in the sewer, Bane’s thoughts went from the photo back to Elka as she trembled on the wet cement and tried to pull her ripped clothes over her exposed flushed skin. 

Elka frowned down at the remaining matte black buttons of her blouse that she’d bought while on vacation with Calvin and found it torn to shreds under her masked captor’s strong hands. 

She sat up straighter as the ruined shreds of the blouse brushed against the chafed skin of her lower back. Elka let out a low hiss and felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes when she reached back with trembling fingers to feel the extent of the physical damage.

Bane squatted down next to her, “are you too gravely injured to stand?” 

Elka sniffed hard as blood ran from between her lips from where her teeth had smashed the inside of her cheek. She shook her head and Bane’s thoughts returned to raining fire and brimstone on Gotham City, more so with his captive that stood out like a sparkling gem in the dank underground. 

With Chief Justice Green in his current judicial position as well as his political aspirations, having Elka as a collateral for negotiations was going to help Bane with any odds stacked against him and his potential success at razing Gotham to the ground. 

His thoughts moved away from concern and made a swan dive into the intoxicating pool of lustful debauchery as his eyes trailed over the swell of her breast she tried to cover with her torn blouse. The sewer was frigidly cold, and he felt a twinge in his groin as her nipples hardened behind her bra and pressed prominently against the satin cup. Bane lifted his eyes and extended his hand to where she huddled on the concrete that was damp with stagnant water. 

“I need you to stand,” he said musically until she looked over at his outstretched hand.

Elka reflexively leaned away at the sight of coagulated blood under his fingernails. 

“Mrs. Green,” he said in a dangerous melodic whisper.

Elka met his eyes and fought to not flinch at the emptiness in his gaze. She felt residual bile burning her throat and tried futilely to scoot away from him. 

Elka gave a startled shout when he moved with ferocious speed and grabbed her and roughly threw her over his shoulder.

She found her voice as he continued to stalk down the hall. “I have money, lots of money,” Elka stammered and pushed at his shoulders as she fought like a fish ensnared on a hook. “I’ll sign a blank check to you or any organization you’d like.”

Bane tightened his hold as she tried to buck out of his firm grasp. In a moment she immediately wished she could undo, Elka scrabbled her acrylic nails against his scalp and scratched at the straps of his coiled metallic mask, breaking his skin, and shifting the heavy-duty straps. 

Bane swore under his breath. The foreign profanity that fell from behind his lips carried music in its anger as he turned to the next open room and locked the metal door behind them.

Elka shouted when she landed painfully on her already sore hip after he tossed her to the floor. He handled her so easily and she soon found herself staring up at his heaving chest as his eyes glittered with anger. 

She felt all breath leave her lungs as he dropped his blood encrusted fingernails to tug down his zipper. 

Elka found her voice as he advanced towards her. “Fine, fine. I’ll access anything you want at the Exchange; all I’ll need is a computer and I’ll do whatever trades you want.”

“I know you will help me Mrs. Green,” he said and shocked her with how fast his hand shot out and backhanded her when she tried to slide away from him. 

Elka struggled futilely as he pulled her under him on the filthy, cold, and unforgiving floor. She screamed and began scraping for a purchase on the front of his metallic mask. 

Bane caught one wrist when she fumbled with the edges of the metal and took another swing at his face before he captured her other wrist and pinned them both above her head. 

He remained silent as he pressed his lower body against hers and forced her thighs painfully apart. 

Beads of sweat bloomed on Elka’s forehead as she fought to get out of his powerful grip. His large hand wrapped around both of her wrists and pinned them to the cement floor. Later her knuckles would be decorated with bruises from the pressure against the dank concrete.

Elka flinched when the sound of her remaining thin panties ripping reached her ears.

“This would not be happening had you agreed with such amiable compliance upon my initial request,” he whispered in a dangerous tone and fumbled at the opening of his pants.

Elka was trapped in his gaze that held the color of coconut shells and toasted caramel, large tears pooled in her eyes and finally rolled down her cheeks as she tried to speak. 

“Anything, stop, please,” she managed to croak before her protests evolved into a low keening. 

Elka found that she couldn’t turn her head or even close her eyes to escape his gaze as he considered her words. 

“She’s in shock,” he thought and smiled behind his mask at the spark of anger that remained in her eyes, the venom in her few spoken words and the electricity under her skin. 

It felt like hours for Elka until she felt his body’s tension recede some as he dropped his free hand back to his zipper and closed up his pants and sat back from her. “It would also be good to remember this moment for future disobedience,” Bane growled melodically as he stared down at Elka’s face.

She finally nodded, her breathing shallow as she accepted his hand when he extended it towards her.

“Can you stand?” he asked as she struggled to rise.


	4. Breathing?

Bane looked down as she gingerly stood, keeping her grasp firm on his outstretched hand. He saw the amount of effort it took her to willingly touch him. 

When she was finally standing as straight as she could manage, she yanked her hand free of his as he continued to drink her in. 

“Are you hurt?”

Bane was careful to keep any warmth out of his voice. He kept his burnt amber eyes, the color of fall leaves before a crisp day of burning, cold and hard. 

Elka stared at him, a slight lift to her chin, narrowing her eyes at him under a fringe of lashes. “I’ll manage,” she finally said and quickly brought a hand to her mouth as coppery notes of blood washed over her taste buds. She felt blood begin to pool up to her lower gum line and dribble past her lips. 

Bane stared at her a moment longer, torn between this new conflict of wanting to help her that wrapped itself around his lower spine and threatened to snap him in half. He practically snarled before forcing another involuntary cry from her when his hand shot out again and closed around the bare flesh of her upper arm. She tried to pull away and gave a high-pitched cry when he tightened his fingers around her bicep. 

“I require your assistance now Mrs. Green,” he stated in a clipped musical tone as he pulled across the utility room and into the dank concrete tunnel.

Elka abandoned the idea of blotting any freely flowing blood staunched as she struggled to keep up with the masked man’s much longer strides. Her eyes tried to memorize the route to wherever this masked monster was taking her. 

Bane pulled her towards the room where Esau had left more stacks of photos, articles, and initiatives that Chief Justice Calvin Green had either supported and threw money at or publicly spoke out against. 

Esau looked up startled when Bane burst in the room with the woman he had neglected to discard from the Gotham Exchange. Esau’s eyes swept across the bleeding, wide-eyed, disheveled woman at his side before returning his full attention to Bane.

Bane spoke quickly to Esau in a language that Elka didn’t understand. She watched the man flick his eyes towards her again before leaving quickly. 

Elka struggled to remain silent when the masked man pushed her towards a rolling chair. “Sit,” he ordered, and she shot him a glare as she settled in the padded chair. 

Before Elka could ask what she was doing in the room that was outfitted with a cornucopia of computer equipment and manila file folders, the masked man picked up a file and began reading to her from the first page.

“Your husband, Chief Justice Green, supports indiscriminate deforestation,” he started in a haunting mechanical tone.

As Elka sat and listened to the fearsome man pepper her with questions, her body continued to find more pockets of pain and she fought to keep her expression neutral. 

“……burning fossil fuels……desertification….,” his melodic voice rained down around her. 

Elka sighed long and low as the masked man continued his thundering litany.

“….climate change….greenhouse gases…..nuclear power….”

Bane paused in his barrage of questions when Esau returned with a stack of folded fabric and sturdy boots. 

Elka closed her eyes as the two men exchanged a few foreign words. She flinched when the clothes landed in front of her bare feet. She opened her eyes and looked down at the folded clothes before reaching for them. `

She unfolded a stack of monochromatic clothes and looked up at Bane when he remained standing in front of her and continued with his musically verbal interrogation. 

“Subsidies…..artificial governmental incentives and…,” Bane started before Elka held both her hands up in the air and interrupted him with a frustrated sound. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, please, can you stop?!? I would rather discuss the life cycle of a goddamn sea cucumber than talk about Calvin and his ideologies.”

Bane regarded her for a few long moments, it started feeling like too long for Elka and she began to grow nervous. Her nervousness gave rise to anxiety that manifested in a slight shaking to her traumatized body.

She felt the inside of her mouth grow bone dry before she boldly stood from the squeaky office chair. “Is there somewhere I can clean up?” Elka asked in a hesitating tone that was laced with an obvious tremor. 

Elka realized she was holding her breath under her formidable kidnapper’s empty gaze and tried to not squirm as he closed the folder he was holding and put it aside. He began to speak when he picked up a yellow legal pad of paper.

“I shall allow you to clean up once you have provided the entire list of your Exchange access codes, passwords and building security codes.”

The terrifying man with the intricate mask that covered the lower half of his face lapsed into silence and held out the pad of paper with its canary yellow blank pages. 

Elka rolled her eyes and finally took the paper. She resumed sitting before looking up, “well, can I at least have something to write with?”

The dangerous man passed her a short-dull pencil and crossed his arms over his broad chest until she began to write. Elka wrote fast and soon had close to a whole page covered in her cramped printing with numerical and alphabetical combinations. 

Bane watched Elka as she wrote with her head bent, concentrating on her task. He picked up another folder as she was compiling her list and scanned the initiative that Chief Justice 

Green was openly supporting. The current governor was pushing for stricter laws on abortion and obtaining birth control. Judge Green had hosted a benefit in support of mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds before a woman is able to be even considered for an abortion. 

Judge Green and the governor had chaired several meetings about denying emergency contraception to anyone under eighteen unless they underwent an invasive and embarrassing exam and had witnessed parental consent. 

Bane looked up from the article and at Elka as she racked her brain for anything she may have neglected to add to the list and finally laid the pencil on the pad of paper and held it out towards him. 

“Is this everything?” he asked before taking the paper from her, setting the yellow pad to the side without even a casual glance. 

“Yes,” Elka said with a hint of annoyance. She added with false confidence, since this man had gone a record time without striking or harming her body, “what now?”

“Now you may make yourself presentable,” Bane stated in a dry tone and crossed the room to her in several long strides. His hand was soon gripped around her upper arm and half dragging her to a small bathroom with an even smaller aluminum floored shower.

Inside the shower stall were a few used bars of a light blue soap. 

Bane pulled Elka into the cramped quarters of the bathroom and flicked the switch on the grey wall. The low wattage overhead lights flickered to life and gave off as much light as they were capable.

Elka looked up at Bane, shifting on her feet, the ground icy cold under her bare toes. Her irritation was beginning to eclipse her anxiety and fear. Elka pressed her mouth into a tight line and was relieved of having to break the silence when he spoke first.

“You have ten minutes,” Bane stated abruptly and left the room.

Elka stared at the closed door before cranking the faucet of the shower all the way to scalding. She pulled off her remaining clothing shreds. Her thigh highs were mostly intact, a faint run on the inner calf was barely noticeable. For some reason, a giggle fell from Elka’s lips at the fact she even noticed her nylons in her current state of being. 

Elka hissed as the hot water made contact with her damaged skin as she bit her lip and refused to allow tears to roll down her cheeks, she soaped up a threadbare washcloth and gingerly dabbed the soapy fabric against her bleeding skin, bruises and sore spots. 

She rinsed out the washcloth and mopped away the dried blood against her naked, wet skin before turning the water off. 

She dried off and happened to glance down at her wedding ring set and suddenly was consumed with remembering the last time she had been with Calvin sexually. Bane stood outside the closed bathroom door. With his Venom enhanced hearing, he was able to discern the sounds of Elka dressing. 

He clenched his hands into fists at the sound of the slate grey fabric of the cargo pants sliding up her thighs, his fingertips ached at the remembrance of the brief touch of her long legs and taut flesh. 

Bane let his mind recall the feel of her unwilling flesh under his touch as he dropped a hand to the zippered front of his cargo pants. He closed his eyes and stroked himself harder as he weighed the risk of kicking open the door and finding her wet and naked. 

The very second that ten minutes had expired; Bane opened the bathroom door. He found Elka standing in front of the sink examining her bruised face and neck. She winced as she brushed her fingertips across her blemished skin, completely aware of Bane‘s entrance to the room but not acknowledging him in any way that stung him, he was not used to be being ignored.

Bane found his irritation growing as Elka didn’t move her attention from her reflection. 

In the space of silence before Bane addressed her, back up on the street level in the lavish penthouse that Elka has been occupying that very morning, her favorite coffee mug still in the sink, Chief Justice Calvin Green had just arrived home. He frowned and thought it was odd that Elka wasn’t there. He looked around the kitchen for a note and checked his phone to see if he had missed a message from her. 

Calvin grabbed a jar of pickles and a paper wrapped package of cold cuts from the fridge when “god please grab my steering wheel,” sounded from his phone. 

“Hey Phil,” he answered when he saw his brother’s number flash across the square screen. 

“Cal, are you watching the news?”

“No, hang on,” Calvin said and fumbled for the remote. Faux News was on and Calvin frowned when he saw a special report on an assumed terrorist attack on The Gotham Stock Exchange. 

Billie-Bob O’Riley’s sweaty, reddened face filled the screen, spittle flew from his lips as he listed off the clear connection between the terrorist attack and the current occupant of the Executive Office. 

Calvin ended the call with his brother when Elka was listed as one of the still missing. His mouth was open, and his growling stomach diminished in a heartbeat as he hit number two on his speed dial.

The phone rang once before it was answered by the peppy voice of Donnie Scotts, Calvin’s PR, and campaign manager. 

“Good evening Chief Justice Green, may I first offer my condolences on the possibility of Mrs. Green being abducted.”

“Fuck your condolences Donnie, this will all but ensure my Senate seat,” Calvin said and prattled on. “Get me booked with Timbaugh, Karlson and O’Riley.”

As Calvin and Donnie brainstormed about campaigning strategies that would focus on the Justice’s grief at his abducted wife and hopefully dead soon for a big death bounce in the polls, Bane spoke to Elka’s back. 

“It is now time to continue our discussion Mrs. Green.”

Elka turned and looked over her shoulder, “what are we discussing now?”

“All in good time,” he answered with musical amusement evident in his voice.

Elka narrowed her eyes and turned completely towards him, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going to happen to me.” 

Bane’s anger flared to life, “I am going to be more than generous and allow your impudence to slide this final time. Proceed out of the door immediately, make a left and do not stop until I tell you.”

“No,” she spit and put her hands on her hips. Elka filled her lungs with air and lifted her chin in total impertinence. 

Bane crossed to her and Elka barely had time to protest before his massive hand was in her hair and pulling her up onto her freshly booted tiptoes. His other hand closed around her slim throat and slammed her roughly against the bathroom wall.

Elka’s control on her tears was soon lost and salty crystalline tears rolled down her cheeks as her face flushed under the pressure of his hand against her throat. 

Bane lessened his grip enough for her to draw a small breath before he let that same hand trail down her waist and rest on her hip. 

“Mrs. Green,” he hissed mechanically and brought his face close to her ear. “Have you already forgotten the punishment for insolence?”

“Fuck you,” Elka said and slapped him across the front of his mask. 

Bane didn’t respond verbally, instead he drove his closed fist into her solar plexus. She dropped to her knees after he released her hair. Bane looked down at her for a few minutes before gripping her roughly under her armpit and hauling her to her feet and roughly spun her until she was leaned over the sink.

“Just hurry up and do what you’re going to do,” Elka said bitterly, in between gasps. 

A growl rumbled through Bane’s chest as he started tugging at the waist of her pants when she closed her eyes and whipped her head backwards with as much force as she could muster. 

The back of Elka’s head made contact with the twisted metallic coils on the front of Bane’s mask. He stumbled back from her at the abrupt contact, his hands went to his face to check the damage to his mask. 

Elka pushed open the door of the bathroom and bounded down the dimly lit corridor of the sewer that she hoped would eventually open to the outside world. Her newly issued boots made pounding noises on the wet cement, too loud for her liking.

Bane straightened up when he discovered his mask was unscathed and still functional before he tore out the door after Elka’s escaping form with a guttural roar. 

Elka’s breath began to come in ragged gasps from her lungs burning need for oxygen, a cramp began to build and snowballed in her side and she stumbled with the piercing stab in her left flank. 

She spared a quick glance over her shoulder as her masked captor was coming closer. 

“This isn’t happening,” she thought as her eyes darted everywhere, looking for any clue to the way out. 

“Please, let there be a door, anything that will lead out of here,” her mind whirled rapidly as she increased her sprint. Elka’s long legs didn’t match Bane’s longer stride and he began to actively gain on her, she pumped her arms as sweat bloomed on her face, errant strands of her hair sticking to her flushed cheeks and forehead. 

Elka’s eyes widened and her body filled with a small amount of hope when she saw an industrial looking door that she was nearly certain had to lead to the outside world. 

Elka was less than ten feet from the grey door, when she felt the faintest touch of the masked monster’s fingertips brush against the thermal shirt that was soaked through with sweat, left clinging to her like a second skin. 

Perspiration poured down her face and stung her eyes, she tasted the salt along her lips. Elka found a shred of speed remaining in her body and lunged the last few feet at the door. 

Her body slammed fully into the steel door, which embraced her as a lover might and responded by opening to deposit her into a large room with grey walls. Three square card tables were butted up to each other and stacks of papers and cardboard tubes littered the mismatched table surfaces. 

The chilly ground rushed up to meet her and she landed hard, her knees acting as twin shock absorbers. Blood blossomed under the fabric covering her knees from her suddenly broken blood vessels.

Elka struggled to her feet, turning with both her hands already raised defensively in front of her. A cry was on the tip of her tongue, but she was soon paralyzed and rooted mutely in place at the look in the masked terrorist’s eyes from where he filled the doorway. The warm caramel orbs were alive with flecks of green fire, his chest heaved with the exertion and overload of adrenaline that flooded his entire nervous system. 

Elka took advantage of the masked lunatic’s silence and stillness to quickly back up and put the row of tables between them. 

She was the perfect picture of chaos, her hands at her side, clenching and unclenching into loose fists. Her dark blonde hair, now tangled, was soaked with nervous sweat and she smelled sweet with fear, tears streamed from the corners of her eyes and the sound of her blood pounding in her ears was deafening. 

Bane watched her scurry to the other side of the tables. “She thinks those flimsy tables offer any semblance of protection,” he thought with amusement. 

Bane stalked towards the uneven row of tables and stood behind one of the many folding metal chairs with their thin upholstered padding. 

He watched her unclench her fists and raise her hands in the air, Elka talked fast, stumbling over her words. 

“I’m waving the white flag,” she said and added desperately. “I’ll discuss anything you want.”

Bane leveled his gaze at her. “It seems too little too late for your cooperation Mrs. Green,” he murmured as he began to walk down the length of the tables. 

Elka shadowed his movements until they remained standing on opposite sides, he began to start walking again, until she yelled at him in frustration. “Stay on your goddamn side of the table.” 

Bane slowed his movements but didn’t completely stop. Elka scrambled for words, “please, can you stay where I can see you. I‘ll tell you anything you want to know?”

He stopped and regarded her across the table, “is this another temporary agreement before you revert to your previous obstinate behavior?” 

Elka shook her head and wiped a clump of wet hair back behind her ear and mopped her sleeve across her slick skin. 

“No, I’ll tell you everything. Just lay out the facts for me, tell me what is going to happen to me,” Elka stated. Her voice grew in strength and she ended the last syllables in an ear-catching tone of command. 

Bane considered her request, dissected her inflection and posture. His eyes sought the cracks in her carefully constructed façade before he pulled out the chair closest and sat down heavily. The air was expelled quickly from the cheap upholstered seat cushion. 

“Sit, we will talk,” Bane said and gestured at the row of empty folding chairs on her side of the row of tables. 

As Elka looked across the table at the masked terrorist, now sitting in the cheap metal chair, his hands resting on top of his strong thighs, across Gotham City, Chief Justice Green was nearly rubbing his hands together and smiling like a schoolboy who caught a glimpse of a pair of white panties under a lady’s skirt. He had ended the call with his campaign manager after brainstorming ideas of how to use Elka’s abduction to skyrocket himself to the United States Senate floor and beyond.

Calvin crossed the beige tiled kitchen floor and started preparing an extra dry martini as he practiced his speech after securing the Senate seat. He generously splashed more vodka to top off the glass, after taking a long swallow of the strong cocktail.

As Calvin returned to the living room to follow his personal messiah news anchor team on Faux News, Elka let out the long breath she had been holding and slowly sat on the folding chair across from her masked captor. 

Bane’s eyes tracked her every movement, his gaze sought out the rise and fall of her chest and the sheen of sweat across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones. His mind whirled yet his visible facial features gave no indication to the tumultuous minefield his conscious mind had become. Questions swirled and crashed with lightning strike forces against the   
inside of his skull.

“She doesn’t fear me completely,” he thought incredulously and fought the urge to shake his head. 

Bane’s eyes bored into hers, his gaze found her sea-green widened eyes, their dark lashes in stark contrast to her pale, clammy skin. Under his mask, his lips pulled into a twisted grin at the palatable sweet stench of her fear. His eyes narrowed as his mind again peppered him with questions. “You haven’t addressed your deviation from the plan, why did you take this woman?”

“She is married to conservative Supreme Court Justice Green, she could prove valuable in the upcoming election,” Bane countered.

“You need nothing further to level Gotham City and liberate her from the oppressive constraints. You need nothing except continued loyalty and obedience.”

Bane pushed the voice to the recesses of his brain where it could play games with his unconscious mind as Elka lifted her chin and met his gaze. 

“What will break her?” Bane thought before addressing her. “Do you know your husband supports drilling in the Arctic and a pipeline that will displace thousands of species and further destroy the earth? Do you support his statements about luxury and social security tax impositions?”

Bane continued his litany of questions in regard to Chief Justice Green. He trailed off when Elka raised a hand and started speaking. “Look, I’m trying to understand your objective here but I’m more than a little thirsty and I’d like a cigarette.”

Bane frowned across the dusty table at her, “you believe you are entitled to make requests?” 

“I think I’m entitled to a hell of a lot more, but right now I’m not asking for much more than a cup of coffee and a cigarette,” Elka returned sharply.

Bane regarded her silently, his first instinct was to stand and throw the table out of the way. His second thought was to beat the stubbornness from her flesh, break whatever was necessary to find her penitence. “What will cause her great suffering?”

Bane stood after a painfully long period of silence, Elka fought to keep her composure when he rose from his chair. She stood from her own chair when he neared the end of the tables. Elka felt some of her body’s rigidity lessen when the fearsome masked madman went to the metal door. She felt the tingle from the brush of confusion when he closed the door behind him and then the metallic sound of the lock being engaged soon followed. 

As soon as all sounds at the door ceased, Elka was across the room and tugging at the door handle. She was not surprised to find it locked and completely unyielding under her grasp, she let out a frustrated sigh and walked the perimeter of the room, searching for any type of exit, big or small. 

As Elka explored the room and hunted for an object that could be used effectively as a weapon, Bane returned to the makeshift control room where Esau was navigating through the Gotham Exchange’s internal infrastructure. He glanced up when Bane walked in the room and passed his line of vision.

The information that Elka had written on the pad of paper awarded nothing that Esau hadn’t already found. Esau’s access was limitless, and he couldn’t understand the necessity of Elka’s presence and life. He had returned to buying stocks with Bruce Wayne’s money when Bane passed through the room again with a white paper cup. 

Esau shook his head and returned to the task at hand of separating Bruce Wayne from his billions. 

Bane returned moments before Elka resumed her spot on the grey folding chair, she tucked a section of copper pipe with a jagged end inside her pant leg. She tucked the   
dangerous end in the cuff of her sock and had her pants smoothed back in place when her captor opened the door. 

Elka turned towards him and her eyes immediately went to the paper cup. A stiffness swept over her as he again walked around the table and resumed his own place across from her. Bane set the cup in front of her and fished a battered half pack of cigarettes from his thick-lined coat and a grass green lighter. 

“How long has this been a habit?” he asked as he tossed the tobacco sticks towards her. 

Elka detected judgment in his tone. “On and off, I usually only smoke under stress,” she said as she brought the white filter to rest between her lips as she lit the end. Bane watched her take a deep inhale and close her eyes. “And this certainly qualifies as stressful,” she added with a tired smirk. 

She reached for the cup and closed her fingers around the paper that contained caffeinated comfort in liquid warmth. The coffee was bitter and murky but spread its warm fingers throughout her chest and belly, she willed the caffeine to work at her growing tension headache and deep ache behind her eyes. 

“Thank you,” Elka reluctantly let fall from her lips after a few sips of the harsh unsweetened java. “I’d kill someone for even one goddamn sugar packet,” she thought as she swallowed the acidic brew. 

Bane heard her gratitude but didn’t acknowledge her, instead he continued badgering her about Calvin’s ideologies and public statements about the wealthy staying wealthy and letting the rest be sorted out by the white man’s jesus. 

Elka’s first thought was to interrupt the masked psycho’s ranting about Calvin but then she decided it would be a good time to drink the bitter coffee and enjoy a smoke or two. She lit another cigarette from the teal blue packaging and birthed a flame from the lighter with the fleshy pad of her thumb. 

Elka inhaled deeply and kept the wintry tasting smoke trapped in her lungs while the masked sociopath continued lobbing a mixture of statements and questions towards her about Calvin and his upcoming election bid for an open Senate seat.

Elka squinted across the table at the masked jackal’s face as he continued his address. His voice maintained its eerily musical melody as he never gave her a moment to possibly answer any of his questions. 

“You attended a fundraiser for the conservative governor and publicly donated five million dollars to his campaign, do you advocate his decision to shut down and level state parks for an oil refinery?”

Bane continued after taking a small breath, Elka raised the cigarette to her lips and inhaled deeply. 

“Did you have any moral quandary about being photographed with the president of the National Rifle Association after he made sexist remarks about a woman’s place and role in life?”

Elka exhaled and closed her eyes, she drained the cup and dropped her still lit cigarette butt into the scant remains of the coffee. 

“Look,” she started and paused to light up another. “Cal’s thoughts and actions are all Cal’s, I don’t…..” Bane interrupted Elka by standing quickly and slamming both of his palms flat against the dusty surface of the table. 

Elka was unable to keep from flinching when his massive hands crashed and made contact with the table’s surface. 

Bane stared down at her, his penetrating gaze seeing through her body and into the highways of her cardiovascular system. 

Elka stayed perfectly still and only the hand holding her cigarette moved as the masked lunatic leaned closer and whispered melodically. “What is your role in this environment, this world?”

Elka inhaled and looked up at him, “I breathe,” she stated and exhaled the lungful of acrid smoke into his looming face.


	5. You're Not a God

Elka couldn’t help but utter a rodent sounding scared squeak when Bane knocked one of the flimsy tables between them to the side as his left hand shot out and found her throat. 

Any further sound she would have made was cut off by the crushing grip under his large palm. Elka’s eyes went wide and her hands clawed at his formidable forearm. She could discern the individual pressure point of each of his fingertips digging into the soft skin of her neck. 

Bane maintained his iron-like grip on her neck and easily tossed another flimsy card table aside with his free hand. He pulled her closer until there was no barrier between them. 

“Mrs. Green, why do you feel the need to arouse my anger?” he whispered mechanically as he lessened his hold on her neck and allowed her to take in a lungful of the stale air. 

“You’re no better than Calvin,” Elka choked out in a strangled voice, coughing in between each word as she added in a slightly more venomous tone. “He dispenses justice with the slam of his goddamn gavel and hides behind his black robes. You judge and execute with your hands and take control by force,” Elka spit before Bane released her so suddenly that she fell backwards. She tried to catch herself on one of the remaining upright card tables but failed and fell heavily to the unforgiving cold floor. 

Elka watched the him turn and pace the room as she smoothed her hair down and sniffed hard. Her eyes never left her formidably sized captor as he turned away from her and walked back to his fallen chair.

She scrambled to her feet when he turned back towards her. 

Elka gave herself a mental pat on the back when she kept from flinching as he approached her. He squatted and picked up her fallen cigarettes and lighter and held them out towards her. She snatched them quickly out of his hands before taking a full step back from him. 

“Sit, we will not discuss your husband for now,” the masked fanatic stated and took a seat on the metal chair he had up righted. 

Elka cautiously took a seat on the edge of the folding chair and lit another cigarette to buy her time before having to speak. 

His melodic voice filled the silence first.

“Despite your continued impudence, I have decided to give you a choice. If you decide to continue your obstinance and not choose from the offered options, I shall make the selection for you. I guarantee you will be unhappy with my choice.”

Elka took a long pull from the rolled tobacco and kept the smoke trapped in her lungs before she asked on a slow exhale. “What are my options?”

“You work for me, perform various tasks and errands for the liberation of Gotham City,” Bane said and waited as she digested his words. 

Elka scoffed. “Liberation? Tasks? What are you planning?”

He regarded her wordlessly until she squirmed in the heavy silence. 

“Fine, what are the other options?” Elka asked as her mind began to fill with a million questions.

“You die, now.”

“I have a few questions,” she asked and was proud that her body exuded not a single tremble. 

“What will cause her to shatter?” he thought at her unexpected response. “What questions do you have?”

“Where will I stay? What will I eat, where will I sleep?”

“You will share meals with me, stay with me and sleep with me. If you cooperate with the aforementioned than you shall be kept safe, sheltered, and given a certain amount of freedom,” he answered in a shiver inducing mechanical tone.

“What does cooperation mean?” she asked and put air quotes around the word cooperation.

“No foolish escape attempts or continued insubordination.”

“Is anything negotiable?” she asked, smashing her cigarette butt under the worn toe of her boot. 

“What do you seek to negotiate?” he asked, finding amusement in her reverting to a world of contracts, numbers, and other tools from the financial cesspool. 

“I won’t try to run away; I just want you to be more specific with what you want cooperation. When can I go home exactly?”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her voice from breaking and fought to not drop her chin to her chest. Elka’s body ached more than it ever did from her glass-fronted fitness center’s Boot Camp Cardio Kick every weekend and climate-controlled spin classes with occasional celebrity instructors pimping their own fitness shakes and products. 

Bane let his eyes freely roam over her as she fought to keep her mostly calm façade intact. He noticed her trembling fingers as she pulled another cigarette from the pack. 

As he let her grow further uncomfortable in the silence under his gaze, he fought his own reaction as he began to hear Talia speaking from the middle of his brain. If he thought hard enough, he could feel her very toxicity, anger and zeal radiating from his cerebral cortex and manipulating his neural pathways.

“What are you doing? Why is she still alive? Why haven’t you killed her, if you’re just looking for a fuck, just do it, cut her throat. Discard her with the rest of the filthy rich detritus.” Talia screamed from the center of his skull. 

When he finally broke the silence, his melodic mechanical wheezing still held a Cro-Magnon candy shell. 

“You are home.”

“Wha…tt?” Elka managed and didn’t even feel herself drop the burning stick of tobacco. “You can’t do this to me,” she started to say as she rose to her feet. “I’m….”

“You’re what?” Bane musically growled as he glommed onto her words and rose to his full height. 

“You’re insane, you can’t keep me here,” she accused and continued stammering as she backed up until her back was met by the wall. “You can’t think possibly think this city is going to bow down to your terrorism,” she added as he began to close the small distance between them. 

Bane stared at her; his mind instantly resumed its lobbing questions around inside his head. He fought to not squint as the volume of his Talia-riddled mind increased in the front of his head. 

“Kill her. Walk over and snap her neck, fuck her if you absolutely need to first. Will that finally fulfill this juvenile and obstinate behavior? You need to return your focus to your plan for the city, you need to remember your goals, oath and loyalty.”

Bane was able to ignore his mind’s monologue in a split-second when Elka found a surge of strength. “You’re never going to get away with anything, the Gotham Police will be down here any minute,” she said on a scoff and delivered on a snarl. 

He froze and narrowed his eyes as he stayed rooted in place, his mind not ceasing in activity.

Elka felt the urge to squirm as his gaze grew heavy and cloaked her with the weight of its intensity. 

“You think someone is coming to your rescue? Where are they Mrs. Green?” he musically mocked her and held his arms out wide, his lateralus muscles flexing, making him seem even larger than he was. 

“Of course, they’re going to come and rescue me,” Elka stammered and cleared her throat before she spoke with more strength to her voice. “They’re going to stop you,” she stuttered as she replayed the news footage of the stadium explosion in her mind and the televised assassination of Dr. Pavel on that manicured end-field. 

“You’re a robber and uh and a murderer,” she started to say and forced herself to keep her eyes on him. 

“Kill one man and you’re a murderer,” he musically murmured as he resumed walking towards her. Elka maintained eye contact and tried to steady her breathing as she thought of the copper pipe in her sock. The metal was cool against the side of her calf.

“Kill a million men and you’re a king,” he continued as Elka’s anxiety began to rapidly blossom and she pictured herself pulling the pipe free. A mantra began playing on repeat in her head, “stab and run, stab and run, stab and run,” she thought as he continued murmuring.

“Kill them all and you’re a god.”

Elka surprised them both by chuckling, “you’re not a god, you’re a fucking thug.”

The back of Bane’s hand found her cheek and she immediately tasted blood in her mouth. Elka barely held onto her balance as she glared up at him. “You’re still a fucking thug,” she spit and tried to avoid his reaching hands. 

Elka screeched and pushed at his chest as he lifted her to her feet. While Bane tried to wrangle her flailing limbs without irreparably hurting her, Elka slid her hand down to pull the copper pipe piece free. 

“Stop fighting, you’re going to hurt yourself,” he ordered until he caught the peripheral swinging motion of her right arm. 

Bane pivoted and her wild downward swipe missed him entirely, his sudden movement threw her off balance and she stumbled against him. 

Bane caught her wrist and squeezed it until she dropped the copper pipe. He wrenched the same arm up and behind her as he shoved her against the concrete wall. The strain on Elka’s elbow joint made her cry out and he clamped his free hand over her mouth.

“Why Mrs. Green?” he growled and pushed his body against her until she was breathless. “Why do you insist on pushing me?”

Elka’s breath came faster. “Why are you doing this?” she practically panted as he wrenched her arm a little tighter as he shifted his stance until her lips were pressed into the wall. Bane fought the desperate spontaneous urge to rip his mask free and pull her scent deep into his lungs.

“What are you getting out of this?” Elka shouted as loudly as she could with her lips pressed against the wall. “What’s the reward?” she cried as Bane lessened the pressure on her wrist enough that she lost some of the rigidity she had been holding onto. 

“You’re the reward,” Bane thought to himself as he pulled her arms high over her head and encircled her wrists in one of his hands. 

“The robbery was going to make the news but you’re going to make people take notice and the good Justice Green will pay attention.”

“How so?” she managed, her breathing returning closer to normal.

“Because you matter to the public,” Bane murmured musically and found himself molding himself behind her as he added. “People listen to your words.”

Elka surprised them both again with a chuckle that rattled with the spit and blood that had collected along the gumline of her full lips. 

“What you see on tv and the words I say aren’t mine,” she said sadly and continued when he remained silence. 

“I don’t have a say in my own life. I’m told how to walk, talk, and act. I’m booked on morning shows for cosmetics that I know nothing about. No one sees me, hears me or knows that I actually exist,” she mumbled and squeezed her eyes shut as tears pricked her eyes. 

Bane wasn’t aware of his free hand migrating to the zippered closure of his cargo pants and coaxing himself to half-mast as Elka sagged against him. 

“I see you,” he murmured, “I know you exist,” he added and slid his free hand from his pants to smooth up and down the side of her body. 

Elka froze as his hand lingered on the swell of her breast under the thermal clothing, despite the layers, his fingertips teased her nipple until it stiffened under the fabric. 

Bane groaned as she resumed her struggling when he started to slide his hand down the span of her smooth belly. 

“Stop fighting,” he demanded as she tried to kick at his shins. He was thankful her dangerous looking shoes were gone with the sharp pain her bare heels produced. 

Fear trilled through Elka when he lifted her restrained arms higher until she had to stand on her tiptoes. 

“This is not what I wanted but I don’t know how else to get through to you,” Bane murmured lowly as he slid his hand down the front of the loose-fitting cargo pants and cupped her intimacy. Only the military-style issued cotton panties kept him from her bare skin. 

“You’re partially right,” he continued as moved his palm in slow circles on her femininity. “You were important enough to get some newsworthy attention but only for distraction,” he admitted. 

He fell silent as Elka froze and tried to ignore the sensation his touch elicited. 

“I was ordered to kill you,” Bane admitted as he teased his fingertips along the edge of her cotton panties. 

Elka felt her heart stop, “are you still going to kill me?” she managed.

“No,” he said raggedly and abruptly yanked his hand from her pants before he released her wrists and stepped away from her.

Elka slowly turned as he slipped out of his shearling jacket before he settled it on the concrete floor. 

“Lay down,” he stated in a tone that bordered on a command.

As his words washed over Elka, above ground, across Gotham City, Justice Calvin Green was practicing his televised sad face with his campaign manager Donnie. Several television networks were en route to the spacious flat the judge shared with his now abducted wife Elka. 

Calvin smoothed down his luxurious suede coat as he poured himself an oak-flavored amber colored alcohol into a cut crystal glass. He was hoping that the local rightest of the right-wing primetime news was sending their sexpot evening anchorwoman Angela Slater.

Angela was a striking redhead with buxom curves and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. 

As Calvin settled back onto the leather sofa, down in the Gotham City sewer system, Bane repeated his request as Elka forgot how to breathe. 

“What does this make me?” Elka managed but maintained a state of near paralysis under the weight of his gaze. 

Bane stood still, his intimidating frame motionless, broad throughout the chest and strong shoulders. He leveled his gaze at Elka. The brilliant fire in his eyes faded in its intensity as he regarded her. 

“You understand that you are drowning,” he started with melodic menace and continued when Elka remained rooted in place. 

“Every day you scramble to the top of the world of money, artificial power, and safety, but you are only sinking, drowning. You’re being buried under the stinking detritus of the rich and falsely entitled.”

Elka stared at him, her initial rebuttal wordless. 

“Of course, I am,” she finally said with a scoff. “But since I have zero choice or say in my life at all, I’d at least like have a say in how I die.”

Bane frowned and she forced herself to remain her straight posture as he walked towards her. 

Elka held her breath as he closed the distance between them, he didn’t have to drop his eyes far to capture her eyes. She found prickles of fear sprout along her skin and forced herself to keep eye contact with him as she felt a solitary drop of sweat form and roll down the skin between her shoulder blades. 

“I’m not going to kill you,” he murmured as she stared down at his outstretched hand. 

“What do you want?” she asked and spit out a mouthful of blood and saliva. 

Bane stared at her and allowed her to recapture some of her equilibrium in the wake of her question. She cleared her throat and coughed up a glob of congealed blood as she continued. 

“Why did you take me from the Reserve in the first place, why did you save me from your men?”

He couldn’t help but keep a touch of surprise from his features at her abrupt question.

“Those were not my men; they were hired by someone else and I wasn’t going to allow anyone then or now to lay a finger on you.”

Surprise washed over Elka’s face as Bane remained still with his hands at his sides. “As for keeping you close, that’s an easy one.”

Elka averted her eyes when his wordless gaze became too heavy. “The moment I saw you peek out from behind your desk, I knew that you were meant for me. I felt it, you were a beautiful hidden gem, the real prize,” he murmured.

“But how can you feel that way, we don’t know anything about each other?”

“I knew enough in the immediacy of seeing you, the rest will come in time.”

“What did you see?”

“Life, a future,” he murmured. Elka closed her eyes when he added, “a challenge.”

“In what way?” 

“The fortress you have built around yourself, I want inside of it, inside of here,” he added and pressed his palm over his heart.

Bane could see herself begin to bring herself tightly back together. “Don’t do that,” he ordered. “Don’t retreat, let me see you.”

“You’re not going to just as quickly change your mind and kill me?”

“No,” he said with absolute certainty and added in the gentlest tone he could manage, “please don’t fear me.”

As Elka weighed his words, above ground and across Gotham City in the penthouse suite Elka had showered in that morning. Chief Justice Calvin Green adjusted his tie after wrapping up his interview. He checked his watch and dabbed an obscenely priced cologne at his collar. The interviews and attention had filled him with an electric energy, and he was going to go have drinks with a new intern, he couldn’t remember her name, but it wouldn’t matter when he spilled his seed on her giant tits. 

Calvin had a fleeting thought to Elka and her fate, but it faded when he thought of the pear-shaped intern who was known for blowjobs that would cave in your skull. “Elka’s probably fine,” he thought as his eyes landed on their wedding photo, proudly displayed on the granite mantle. The police had told him to keep his cellphone close by in case there was a ransom call. Calvin had nodded in a convincing manner and demonstrated what seemed like genuine concern but was secretly crossing all his fingers that his phone would never ring. 

As Calvin waited in the bar of the five-star hotel for his happy-ending evening, back in the grey-walled room in the Gotham sewer system, Elka stared down at Bane’s hand that remained outstretched. 

“Please,” he murmured in a tone so low, no one would’ve ever been able to overhear. If the FBI audio surveillance were looking for rats, they would only find the trash eating, whiskered, furry variety. 

Elka raised her eyes to his face, she was near certain in that moment that the masked man was not used to having to ask for anything. She returned her eyes to his hand as he continued in a soothing melodical tone. 

“I can’t understand exactly what you’re feeling but I know it must be close to catastrophic. But I will provide you with everything you need, everything you want.”

Elka felt the weight of the walls and yards of rocks, rebar, and asphalt. She watched in slow-motion as she let him close his hand around hers. 

He squeezed her hand and pulled her close. He felt her let out a long exhale as he traced the outline of her lips with the rough pad of her thumb. Bane kept himself motionless and continued his even breathing as her words emerged on a whispered breath. “But I am afraid of you,” she admitted.

“Lay down,” he stated and tugged on her hand. The large diamond ring on her finger pressed into his palm. 

“Why is that necessary?” she asked and tried to stay calm as his grip tightened.

“I need to know that you’re through fighting me.”

“I said I was.”

“I need more than that.”

“My word isn’t good enough?”

“No, I need to feel the truth in your body.”

Elka felt herself flush so rapidly, she was certain she projected the magnificent color of an Aurora Borealis. 

Bane smiled behind his mask as lust surged through his limbs and he fought to not free his hardening cock from where it strained behind his zipper. 

“Go lay down,” he growled and Elka felt her feet carry her to where his plush jacket was sprawled, its woolen arms spread open and awaiting her body.

She sank to the soft inside of the jacket as he fumbled with a pouch at his waist and drew up a syringe full of a light blue fluid. 

“What’s that for?” Elka asked with an immediate rebound in her tension. 

“For me,” Bane said.

Elka’s breath slowed to the barest of inhalations as he started to remove each article of clothing he was wearing. 

After he had stripped himself bare, she couldn’t help but let her eyes drop from his and make a slow lazy trail down his heavily scarred body. Her gaze traveled over his broad chest and heavily muscled torso.

Elka unconsciously bit her lower lip and felt a blush fill her face as her eyes dipped lower to his hardening masculinity. 

Bane’s eyes glazed over with lust as he returned her stare and walked towards her. He reached for her and settled his hands on her hips. “I want you naked,” he whispered raggedly and tugged at her long-sleeved shirt. She allowed him to pull and tug at her clothing and expose more skin to his greedy gaze, until she was just as bare as he was. 

Elka felt a preemptive ache inside when she dropped her eyes and found his cock rigid with enthusiasm. 

“What’s that for?” she asked shakily as he pushed the needle above his hip bone and depressed the contents. 

Bane waited until the drug stopped tingling as it entered his body before he answered. “It’ll allow me to take this off for a while without debilitating effects,” he said as he reached up to the numerous clasps and buckles that kept his coiled mask in place. 

Elka watched in rapt silence as he pulled the mask free and revealed sharp features and cleanshaven skin that had a five-o-clock shadow by noon. 

A scar ran across his lips and accentuated his defined chin. 

“Put your hair down,” he said in a more guttural time without the aerosol inhalant assistance as he knelt next to her on the thickly lined jacket.

Elka’s hands held the barest of tremors as she freed her hair and let it tumble loosely to the middle of her back. 

“Thank you,” he murmured as he shifted and pulled their naked bodies together. 

“Put your arms around me,” he demanded as he pushed her onto her back and slid his hands under her bottom, shifting her closer to him.

Elka slid her hands up the length of his strong, muscle bound arms as he stared down at her. 

“How long has it been since you’ve shared a bed with the Good Justice?”

She ignored his question and traced her fingertips along the deep indentations of his triceps and moved upwards along the smooth muscled caps of his shoulders. Bane held his breath as she smoothed her fingers along his collarbones and up the line of his neck.

“How long?” he repeated as he licked his index and middle finger until they were dripping with saliva. 

Elka squeezed her eyes shut when she felt his fingers against her bare femininity as he rubbed his spit-covered fingertips on her clit until she reached a hand down and steadied his movement.

“That’s too much,” she whispered with an uncomfortable groan. 

“Tell me Elka. How long, how long since you’ve shared your body with the Good Justice?”

“A long time,” she finally said and added with an exasperated sigh. “And, please stop calling him that.”

Elka felt her breath catch as he slid his hands down her waist, pausing lightly to squeeze her hips and cup her bottom. He nuzzled his face against her ear, speaking softly. “I want to see all of you, watch myself sink into you. But right now, I need to hear you state that you are absolutely through fighting me.”

Elka squeezed her eyes shut and wordlessly nodded. “I need to hear you say it,” he said as he rhythmically squeezed the flesh of her hips. 

“So soft,” he murmured lowly and she took a big breath when she felt the roughened skin of his fingertips return to move in painfully slow circles against her exposed femininity. He mumbled incoherently as he teased her nerve cluster until it grew firm under his touch.

Elka’s breathing increased as he steadily teased her clit until she felt a heavy, dull warmth starting in her lower body. His constant touching made her intimate folds wet and sensitive, her breath caught in her throat as he slipped a finger inside her wet center.

He dropped his head to the curve of her neck; his exhales were warm against her ear. She felt her body temperature growing as the muscles in her lower body began to convulse. 

She clenched her jaw, fighting her body as her climax became more and more imminent.

“I need to hear you say you’re through trying to fight,” he whispered urgently as he pushed her body closer to tumbling into the precipice of ecstasy. “Tell me yes.” 

Elka took a deep breath and held it trapped in her lungs, her mind whirred rapidly and knew there was no hope of changing the current tide and she was at a critical crossroad between life or a death sentence.

“Yes, I’m done fighting,” she said raggedly as he gently nudged her thighs apart and felt his resolve dissipate completely as he grasped his hardened length and positioned himself at her opening as he tightened his hands on her hips.

“Not too vigorous,” she said with a surge of panic in her voice as she dropped her hand to his wrist. Bane looked down at her hand that closed around his wrist and tightly squeezed. Elka dropped her eyes from his heated gaze and looked at his hand gripped around his rigid cock.

“I swear,” he groaned and added raggedly. “Allow me inside you, guide me please.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as her orgasm started in slow waves and struggled to not moan or move her pelvis towards him. She felt his fingertips on her chin and opened her eyes to meet his heavy gaze. “You’re so very beautiful.”

A sudden blush bloomed on her face and neck as he teased the head of his cock around her twitching clit before sliding up and down her wet, silken folds. She could hear the careful control in his tone, “I don’t want this to be bad for you.”

Elka bit back a gasp of pain as she tightened her grip on his wrist and helped him slide his engorged cock inside her. Her intimate, wet canal spasmed around his length and he squeezed the flesh of her hips to the point that olive-sized bruises would appear within the hour.

Elka bit the inside of her cheek as he fully slid into her, stretching her quickly aching center of intimacy. 

Bane kept his rhythm slow and even, luxuriating in the feeling of sinking into her hot, tight center as he brushed her hair away from her neck and pressed his lips to her flushed skin. He felt a jolt through his body when he coaxed a pleasurable sounding moan from her as he licked a line up her neck and pressed his lips firmly over the large pulse in her neck. 

“So beautiful,” he whispered, and lifted his face to catch and hold her eyes as he bent her knees and brought them up to his waist as he increased his rhythm.

Elka’s gasp filled his ear when their bodies touched, and he felt her quiver around his hard length. He captured her eyes and could practically see the myriad of emotions that she was torn between physically and mentally.

He slowed down his pace and she fought to not show the pleasurable waves of ecstasy that continued to spread throughout her body as his flesh met hers and he uttered a low growl as her body tightened around his thrusting cock, squeezing and massaging his hard length. 

“So soft,” he whispered as he kissed the bruised skin of her neck and plunged himself fully in and out of her, feeling her slick center like liquid silk. He slid a hand across the smooth plain of her belly to close around her breast, he could feel the delicate skin of her nipple harden under his palm. 

Bane squeezed her breast in time with each push of his cock. “I see you,” he grunted as he pushed himself deeper. “I know you exist,” he growled as their intimate flesh wetly kissed. 

Bane squeezed her breast in time with each thrust of his cock, Elka felt his body tense as he tightened his grip on her breast. He buried his face in the curve of her neck as his cock spasmed and she felt his sticky come fill her in hot bursts. 

Bane kept his face pressed against the curve of his neck as he stayed solidly sheathed, his cock still twitching inside her. “Elka?” he whispered as he lifted his head and stared at her closed eyes as she remained as still as a statue under him. He could see her pulse dancing erratically in her neck.

“Elka?” he whispered until she opened her eyes and met his gaze. She muttered an acknowledgment of his voice, but her eyes were glassy. 

In a moment born of complete naked spontaneity, he lowered his lips to hers, his cock still buried deep inside her. 

She couldn’t find her own voice but managed to vigorously shake her head and clamped a hand over her mouth. 

Bane froze, his lips nearly touching the back of her hand and blinked slowly before he pulled his softening cock out of her. 

“Why won’t you kiss me?”

“That’s too much, too intimate,” she murmured faintly and rolled over and faced the wall. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tears to remain away as she could feel his sticky semen leaking onto the inside of her of her thighs. Elka stifled a groan at the growing ache inside from the void it had been of intimate contact with anyone for a good amount of time. 

Bane stared at her back for a few moments and heard her suppress a whimper when he laid a hand on her side. 

His curiosity got the best of him and he hated the weakness in his voice. “Why won’t you kiss me?”

Elka mumbled lowly and all he heard was muffled syllables. 

Bane pulled at her shoulder until she had to roll over onto her back or be forced there. “What did you say?” 

Elka took a deep breath, acutely aware of his hand still resting on her shoulder. She met his rich hazelnut gaze; fiery flecks adorned the warm orbs and she spoke without a tremble to any of her spoken staccato syllables. 

“I said, let me have that one thing. Please,” she said resignedly, adding in a low tone. “You’ve taken everything else, let me have that one thing.”

“She isn’t in any position to ask for favors and why is she still living? You got what you wanted. Didn’t you work it out of your system?” Talia screamed inside his skull, her voice echoing. “Kill her.”

Bane squashed Talia’s voice and settled behind her and pulled Elka’s naked body against his. 

“What would it take for you to look at me in a positive light?”


	6. No Disturbances

Elka blinked at him rapidly, “I wouldn’t even know how to begin answering that,” she stammered and watched him wordlessly assess her words.

He finally nodded, “you don’t have to answer that right now.”

Elka continued to stare at him, being so close to him and feeling his tensile strength had her feeling less confident speaking to him. 

Bane looked away from her long enough to affix his mask back in place, the stale room air began to encroach on the half-life potency of the opiate inhalant.

She fought to not push his hands away as he helped her back into her monochromatic clothes. 

“Come with me Mrs. Green,” he said as he rose to his full height and held out his hand towards her. 

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you can properly rest.”

A frown appeared between Elka’s eyebrows as she finally forced herself to meet his hand. He closed his hand around hers and helped her rise from the floor. She followed Bane from the grey room with the now disheveled row of tables and chairs.

Once in the hall, Elka struggled to keep up with her hulking captors much longer strides. 

They proceeded wordlessly down the concrete tunnels. 

Elka wanted to ask where they were going but didn’t want to speak to the masked man any more than need be at this point. She stopped when he paused at a rusty metal cabinet and workbench. She was happy to see a battered plastic coffee maker with a bright orange extension cord running from it, perched on the table’s surface. 

“Coffee,” was all Bane said to her before she filled a paper cup to the brim with the bitter brew. As Elka stirred in a few tablespoons of real sugar, Bane opened the cabinet and passed her a sealed bright green package of cigarettes. She put the pack in her pants pocket and nodded her thanks as she took a few long sips of the comforting liquid. 

Bane waited until she had taken a few sips and topped off her coffee before continuing to lead her through the sewer system. Elka nearly dropped her coffee when her captor stopped short of a set of damp stairs. The masked terrorist stepped to the side and glanced back at where she stood licking spilled coffee off her thumb.  


“Proceed upstairs, Mrs. Green.”

Elka squinted in suspicion, “what’s up there?” she asked as she gestured with her coffee cup. 

Bane narrowed his eyes and clenched his teeth, “there is no need to worry yourself unnecessarily.”

Elka held his gaze and tightened his hand around the paper cup with the heavily sweetened coffee before she tentatively placed her foot on the bottom step. 

Her left hand found the cold metal rail and she ascended the stairs as the masked maniac fell into step behind her. Elka struggled to not stop on each step or bolt away, she could hear his ragged breathing as he climbed the steps behind her.

As Bane followed Elka up the stairs, his eyes roamed from the crown of her head to the soles of the scuffed black boots that encased her woolen sock covered feet. He found clarity descended and smothered the shouting in his head when Mrs. Elka Green aroused his interest and peaked his distraction. 

Bane’s eyes followed the long line of her legs and thermal encased upper torso, the faint line of her shoulder blades were visible under the thick fabric. 

Elka held back at directing a scathing remark to the masked maniac behind her, she didn’t like the hulking man at her back. She pressed her lips together and proceeded up the stairs, she suppressed the urge to exhale loudly with relief when the stairs ended, and she walked onto a nearly barren concrete loft. 

She looked from floor to ceiling and found herself facing a twin mattress covered in dark linen, the corners pulled taut enough to bounce a whole mess of coins. One corner of the dank room housed a dark wooden desk and there was a sturdy yet benign chair, papers littered the surface of the desk and rolls of blueprints. 

Elka squinted her eyes and saw the tubes were stamped as, “Property of Gotham City Planning Commission.”

She turned with a question on her lips as she simultaneously took a few steps backwards to create as much space as she could between her and the masked man. 

Bane gestured to the office chair of sorts, “you may sit.”

The heavy thud of footsteps sounded on the stairs and a rough looking man with a scruffy beard and dark eyebrows appeared with a stack of papers. 

The man’s gaze fell upon Elka and his hooded eyes held nothing but naked hatred for her and a healthy craving to spill her blood.

Bane barked what sounded like an order to the man with murder in his eyes who grunted an abrupt reply and departed from Elka’s line of sight.

“What did you say to him?” Elka asked as soon as the sound of the man’s retreating footsteps faded away. 

“I told him there were to be no further disturbances.”

Elka nodded and returned her attention to her coffee.

Elka watched him silently and got her breathing under control as the masked man sat in the office chair she had recently occupied. She rubbed her neck as the only sound in the room was his mechanical inhalations and ragged exhalations before he began to speak.

“Do you expect the good Judge Green to be appearing on television in a public plea for your return?”

Elka scoffed and shook her head, wincing at the startling pain throughout her neck. “Knowing Cal, he might declare me dead if I’m not home by midnight. He’ll have one of his well-educated whores on my side of the bed in no time.” 

“The good Justice is an adulterer?”

Elka nodded and gave a sad smile as her mind forced her to replay the day, she found out for certain that conservative and fundamental Christian Justice Calvin Green was cheating. 

Bane watched as Elka closed her eyes and a frown appeared on her forehead, her mind was forcing her to see still frame images behind her closed eyelids. 

“How are you certain that the good Justice is breaking his marriage vows?”

“It’s an uninteresting story and one I don’t care to talk about,” Elka replied quickly and rubbed her index and middle fingers against her temples hoping to quell her growing headache. 

“I would like to hear this uninteresting story and make my own judgment to its value,” Bane insisted.

Elka blew out a sharp breath and didn’t bother to continue arguing what had begun as absolute inevitability. 

“Cal and I had been married a little over two years, I noticed he’d become colder and was at court late more and more frequently.” Elka drew air quotes around “at court late,” as she continued with discovering Calvin’s infidelity. 

“An associate was coming for dinner and I was upstairs getting dressed. I remember distinctly that I was looking for my emerald earrings that my Great Aunt Stella had left for me in her will.”

Elka looked down at the cement for a couple breaths before saying with a dry laugh, “was Aunt Stella helping me or laughing at me? I went to a couple storage bins in the closet where we kept watches and some jewelry. I found a newer plastic case in the back of the stack, inside were ten and I know for sure ten because I counted them too many times, stacks of banded one hundred-dollar bills. There was over one hundred thousand dollars in this storage tote.”

When Elka paused, Bane didn’t do anything more than breathe and observe. He was extremely interested in what she was saying. 

Before Elka continued she had a jarring memory of picking up the cash, the smell of money assaulting her nose. She curled her hands into fists as she remembered the weight of the crisp, banded bills. 

“There was an envelope under the cash, it wasn’t sealed.”

“What were the contents of the envelope?” Bane asked when she lapsed into silence, not wanting to talk anymore. 

“Some photos, pictures of Calvin with this woman I had met at the company Christmas party. Dana Brenton.”

Bane listened as Elka began describing the 4x6, glossy photographs she had flipped through twenty-seven months ago. 

“The camera must’ve been on a dresser or nightstand; it didn’t look like a hotel room. I assume it was Dana’s place. The first photo was of Dana in a very revealing negligee lying on the bed, the next was similar to the first, except Cal was now present undoing the lace ties of her whorish garb. The next few showed Dana strip down to nothing and even have her goddamn ankles delicately crossed like a fucking lady.”

Elka didn’t even register that the masked maniac let her rant, she stood and paced as she described more of the photos. A persistent frown pulled at her forehead as to the day she couldn’t shake the image of Dana’s face, her expression was birthed in smoldering sexuality and brimming over with animalistic hunger.

“The rest of the photos proved that Cal was cheating,” Elka stated vaguely as her mind laughed at her and pushed forth a couple unforgettable images that she was incapable of ignoring. 

Elka felt bile rise in her sore throat as a photo of a nude Dana materialized in her mind. Dana was on her knees with Calvin’s cock in her mouth, one hand was wrapped around the base of Cal’s proud erection and the other was clamped on the back of his pale thigh. The following couple photos showed a few changes of angles and positions and then Calvin’s head buried between Dana’s thighs, her hands entwined in his salt and pepper hair. 

Elka managed to block out the rest of the trading off of head until the photos of the unabashed, ecstatic act of consummation. 

The last photos of the stack did not disappoint, she was rewarded with the glossy still frame of Dana on her hands and knees and Calvin buried inside her. Calvin’s hands were gripped onto Dana’s hips so hard that the flesh was bunched under his hands. Calvin’s hands alternated between pulling her hair and squeezing the full flesh of her rounded bottom.

Bane watched Elka as she recalled the second to the last photo of Dana with her lips drawn back from her teeth and an expression of carnal lust. She straddled Calvin, her powerful thighs flexed as the freeze frame captured her as she moved up and down his rigid shaft with urgency. Calvin was intently watching her rise and fall as she impaled herself on his length. 

Elka shook herself back to reality as the memory of the final photo in the stack faded to the recesses of her mind. 

The last photo looked like it was an orgasm for both of them. Dana’s back was arched, her hands splayed across her belly. Calvin’s hands were clamped on her hips, the knuckles frozen white in the tightness of their grip. Both of them had their eyes shut and were baring their teeth in a manner that held no shame. 

Elka glanced over and met the gaze of the masked terrorist, she tried to keep her hurt hidden and was the first to look away. 

“Is that what you’re eager to return to?” Bane asked and Elka shook her head. “Not Calvin but not being your prisoner, freedom. The ability to make my own choices, not being under lock and key or afraid.”

“If you participate willingly, you will be rewarded with limited freedom.”

“What kind of participation?” Elka quickly asked. 

“In every conceivable way,” Bane said and watched her try to control her expression.

“You certainly can’t just expect me to lay down and let you fuck me again, just like that?” she scoffed, and Bane was quick to reply as soon as she had uttered the last syllable of her sentence. 

“You agreed to stop fighting not more than an hour ago.”

Elka felt her anger rise to compete with her fear, she felt herself flush remembering the fiery copper in his eyes as he seemed to see inside her as he filled her with his enthusiastic thrusting.

She imagined she was giving a presentation to the board and commanding the attention of every set of eyes and ears in the room.

“We never discussed your specific expectations.”

“It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out what I want,” Bane said in a low grumble that was all masculine as he continued with remembered lust infusing each syllable. 

“You will consent to my touch when I feel like it, however I wish, wherever I please.”

“Do my wants carry no weight?”

“How long until you shared the good Justice Green‘s bed?” he deflected.

“Can you please stop calling him that?” she spit.

Bane smiled behind his mask; the movement of his lips that occurred behind the twisted metallic coils was known only to him. “How long, Elka?”

Elka sighed heavily and shrugged, “I don’t know. A few dates I guess.”

“Three?” he asked. 

“It could’ve been or maybe four.”

“How about five, Elka?”

“Sure, why not, it could’ve been five.”

“Then I shall arrange five dates before you have to be receptive to intimacy.”

“Well, five is not some sort of set rule or anything,” Elka began to hurriedly rebut before Bane raised a hand and interrupted her. 

“How many then?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“What do you need in order to answer that question?”

“Time, I guess, it’s not a scientific formula.”

“We shall go on as many excursions and activities until you are receptive to my touch.”

“But that could be a long time and what if I never feel that way?”

Bane considered her words a moment before replying. “Then we shall come to an agreement for your consent.”

“You really are crazy,” Elka said and jumped to her feet and started pacing. “It’s not just a matter of time before I’d be eager to share your bed.”

“Is it a matter of money?” 

“I am not a whore; I won’t let you fuck me for money.” 

“How about for your possible freedom?”

“You need to explain that a whole hell of a lot more,” Elka quickly replied, her interest instantly piqued at the masked man’s mention of the “F” word. 

Talia’s voice finally broke through to Bane’s conscious mind and unleashed a litany inside the front of his skull. 

“Why do you continue entertaining these ridiculous notions? Just hurry up and kill her so you can move your focus back to the objective. You haven’t forgotten your assigned tasks have you, what kind of spell does this stock exchange cunt have you under?” 

Bane fought to not shake his head and forced his thoughts into silent hibernation as he turned his full attention back to Elka as she was overwhelmed by a coughing fit.

Elka watched her masked captor rise from his chair and pick up a bottle of water from the corner of the nondescript desk. She snatched the bottle from his outstretched hand when he offered it and quickly drank nearly a third of the bottle. She coughed and drank a bit more before replacing the clear, plastic cap. 

“Please explain my possible freedom.”

“You will agree to share your life with me for a trial period. During that time, you will be at my side and share my bed. I shall not force you to be intimate immediately, but you shall allow me to date you and learn about you and see if there is an eventual evolution towards consent.”

Bane paused for the barest of moments. When Elka offered nothing in the way of a verbal or non-verbal response, he quickly continued. 

“If at the end of the agreed upon trial period there is zero connection or attraction, then you are free to go. Unharmed, with no repercussions.”

“How long is this trial period?”

“One year,” Bane answered without hesitation.

“Ha,” Elka stated abruptly. “No way am I giving you a year of my life, three months,” she countered.

“9 months,” he quickly lobbed back. 

“Six and not a single day more.”

“Six months it is.”

Elka swallowed hard and bit her lip, she took a few smaller sips of the room temperature water. She squeezed her eyes shut as the room began to feel like it was spinning as the walls closed in. 

Bane watched as the tranquilizer he had added to the water do its pharmaceutical job. The potent drug swam through her nervous system and made her eyes roll back and slump sideways on the mattress. 

As Bane caught the bottle before it fell from her hands and replaced the clear, plastic cap, across the city, Justice Green was looking through his staggering number of Italian suits. He needed a suit that would scream grieving husband as well as “Vote for Me,” when he appeared with Billie-Bob O’Riley on Faux News for a special edition report on Elka’s assumed abduction.

As Calvin gave a somber interview and dabbed at his eyes at the appropriate times, back in the sewer, Bane moved the blankets aside as he shifted and arranged Elka’s limp body under the navy-blue sheets.

He traced his fingertips along her jaw and brushed the bruises that were blossoming darker on her neck. “So soft,” he murmured, relishing the contact. 

As Elka’s body was inundated by the potent tranquilizer and fell into a dreamless state, Bane pulled and arranged the linen over her still form and let his eyes linger unabashedly on her. He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear before forcing himself away from her and settling behind the desk. 

Bane reviewed the recent folders that the angry underling had delivered. 

He continued to look through the other compiled folders for several more hours until his eyes grew tired. Bane’s gaze moved to Elka’s shape under the dark linen. The drug had knocked her out flat and her breathing was deep and even. He closed the folder he had been reading and turned off the lamp with its single burning bulb and no lampshade adornment.

Bane sat on the edge of the bed next to her as he unlaced and kicked off his heavy boots. He gently pulled the linen away from her and slid next to her deeply sleeping form. He shifted on his left side and settled around her, he gently pulled at her hips until she was solidly enveloped in his warm embrace. 

Bane pressed his face to the back of her neck, the small hairs at the base of her skull tickled his nose. He hesitated, his mouth hovering, before pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. 

He sank back into the mattress; his arms still tightly clutched around her and fell into the lap of sleep


	7. Was it that Bad?

The drug began to wear off and Elka’s conscious mind slowly came back to life and she began to stir from her unconscious state, her mind slowly swam to the surface. She kept her eyes closed as spikes of pain pierced her head and body. 

In an instant she became aware of his body pressed against hers and being nestled in the warm circle of his strong embrace. She held her breath and listened to his steady breathing, each of his exhales hot against the top of her head. 

"How is this even happening?" Elka thought as the steady ache seemed to fill her head like a bloated balloon and press inside every nook and cranny of her skull.

She struggled to not cough, her mouth nearly devoid of saliva and she felt pain radiating around the circumference of her slim neck. 

She let out a slow and controlled breath, “maybe this is a really, really vivid dream," she thought with a very faint amount of delusional hope.

"You're going to wake up and be back at home. There are some freezer burned waffles and a whole bottle of syrup in the cupboard," she thought and cracked her eyes opened into a thin line.

It was too painful to turn her head to either side but if the walls looked anything like the ceiling there was certainly nothing to write home about. Overhead was smooth grey concrete, randomly dripping fat drops of water from the condensation.

"What did I do wrong to end up here?"

Bane had awoken before Elka, he stayed still as she slowly woke up. He knew she remembered where she was when her whole body stiffened in his embrace. He shifted his top arm from being draped around her to slide up the length of her upper arm and pause briefly on her shoulder cap where he gently squeezed the rigid flesh.

She inhaled sharply as he traced his fingertips across the top of her shoulder and dance lightly up her neck where her pulse rapidly thudded. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he whispered and traced the cartilage of her ear in the space before she answered. 

Elka struggled not to tremble, “would you actually stop?”

“Would it be so bad for me to touch you?”

“Worse,” she muttered under her breath.

Bane’s anger surged, and a startled yelp fell from Elka’s lips when he seized her around the waist and yanked her onto her back and deftly scrambled on top of her. She didn’t have time to say anything before his hands fell on her thighs and yanked them apart. Before she could process, his hands closed around her wrists and pushed them above her head. 

“You know, I could just fuck you right now,” he musically hissed.

Bane’s anger consumed him, but he immediately regretted his words. He couldn’t find a way to put into words how much he needed her on a cellular level, every fiber and red blood cell was bloated with lust and desire. He was certain his deprivation and need were visible as he lessened his vice like grip on her but kept her firmly in his grasp. 

“You’re not going to get your way by hurting me,” she shouted up at him.

He stopped suddenly, “then tell me what I have to do to get my way.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Elka stammered, sweat blossoming on her skin as she flushed. 

“Would it really be so bad to have me touch you?”

Bane’s voice was steady, and he was calm on the outside but inside he was desperate to touch her, strip her naked and run his hands along every square inch of her bare skin. His eyes fell to the side of her neck, where her large artery pounded under her flushed skin. He dropped his head to the smooth curve where her neck met her shoulder, he inhaled deeply against the exposed skin, repeating himself in a whispered tone. Even through the titanium mesh of his mask, he could smell her warm skin and sweet scent of fear. “Would it?” He repeated as his gaze traveled to every bit of her exposed skin as he released his hold on her wrists.

Bane kept his masked face pressed against her, feeling tension fill her, he lifted his head, so he could look at her face.

“Please stop,” she said as her voice broke, betraying her. “Please,” she said raggedly and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from further humiliating herself, she hated the sound of her begging. She pressed the other hand to the middle of his chest.

He waited until the frown between her eyes smoothed out before he spoke. 

“You don’t need to hold onto that fear. I’m going to stand up now and go sit over there,” he tried to say gently and nodded to the chair behind the desk.

Elka released a shuddering breath as he did exactly what he said before she shakily sat up and self-consciously smoothed her hair down, hating herself for the display of weak emotions. 

She watched him reach under the desk and lift up a nondescript plastic bag. Her breath caught in her throat as he approached her slowly and set the bag at her feet. Elka waited until he had resumed sitting before, she pawed through the sunny yellow plastic bag. She sighed raggedly with relief when her hand closed around a strong over-the-counter pain killer and spilled four of the yellow triangular tablets into her palm before she popped them in her mouth. She made a face as she chewed the pills, the acrid taste bringing involuntary tears to her eyes. 

She pulled a toothbrush and small tube of mint paste from the bag and a generic stick of fresh-scented deodorant. 

Elka stopped looking through the bag when he stood and walked towards her, he kept his hands visible and slightly raised as he closed the distance between them. “I am not known for my delicacy or finesse, but I would like to revisit our previous conversation.”

She looked up at him and wordlessly nodded, she struggled not to scoot further from him as he settled next to her. He pulled the plastic bag from her hands and she watched as he rooted around inside it, speaking as he searched. “I’d also like to brush your hair as we talk.”

Elka felt her eyes widen a bit at his words as he ripped the plastic tag off a blue handled hairbrush.

She turned away from him slightly as she felt his fingertips moving against her scalp and gently worked through a couple knots before sliding the brush through entire length of the soft strands. 

“Is there anything else you need? Any prescriptions?”

“Vitamin D, but I but I think I’ll be fine without it.” 

“And feminine products?”

He ran the brush from the crown of her hair to the end of her hair as she remained silent.

He paused in mid-stroke of the brush, “Elka?”

“I don’t need anything like that, I had a hysterectomy a few years ago.”

“Why?” he asked resuming the luxurious strokes through her hair. 

“That’s not really anything you need to know,”’ she said with an uppity sniff.

“Quite the contrary.”

Elka’s irritation flared. “How is that any of your business?” she demanded turning towards him. 

“Because you’re here with me now and if I’m going to ensure that your every need is met, I need to know some history.”

Elka felt that he was looking inside of her, watching her arteries expand with the increased blood flow through her body from her pounding heart.

“Well I don’t need or care to talk about it,” she said angerly and sprung to her feet. He rose just as fast, seeming to anticipate her movement. 

“We’ll come back to that,” Bane started to say before rushing forward. The residual effects of the tranquilizers had left her dizzy and the room began to tilt as she felt herself fall to the floor. 

Bane caught her before the cold, unforgiving ground could. She muttered unintelligibly when she fell into his arms. She fell awkwardly and ended up cradled in his strong arms. 

“Don’t, I just stood up too fast,” she managed when he began to rise with her clutched tightly in his arms. “The room is spinning; I just need a few minutes. Please,” she added and swallowed hard as acidic bile threatened to climb up her throat.

Bane settled in a more comfortable position on the floor and brushed her hair away from her clammy forehead. His mind which had stayed silent for a few hours, roared to life. 

“Why?!? Why did you take her? What are you doing?”

He shook his head, “because I want her,” he nearly rebutted aloud. 

As Elka tried to breathe slowly in and out, he dropped a hand to rest on her shoulder and kneaded his fingers into the tense flesh. He thought of the men under his command and ability to crush whatever barriers in his way, but he couldn’t talk to the one woman in his arms. He inadvertently chuckled aloud, and she shifted and looked at him, her expression caught between curiosity and a frown. 

“What do I do now, what do I say?” he thought furiously and slid his hand from her shoulder cap to trace his fingertips along her jawline. His eyes moved to settle on her neck, and he felt a stab in his gut when he saw the bruises blossoming on the pale skin of her neck. An oval shaped blemish created perfectly by his thumb drew his attention and held his gaze. 

“I’m going to pick you up now and carry you over to the bed.”

Elka felt too awful to argue and wordlessly nodded as she let her eyes fall closed. She felt his arms slide under her body and then the change in elevation as he lifted her from the cold floor. The walk from the floor to the bed seemed to take a long time and she was grateful when her back came in contact with the firm mattress. 

“Rest,” he whispered and brushed a few errant strands of hair off her damp forehead. 

As Elka drifted back into a fatigued sleep, Bane resumed reading through the folders of information that Esau had procured about Chief Justice Green and the creative bookkeeping of his Senatorial Super Pac funding. 

He would randomly look away from reading to stare at Elka’s sleeping form, he found himself getting distracted by her profile and a drop of blood that had dried to a dark spot on her lower lip. 

His level of distraction peaked when she began to stir to a conscious state, and he felt a stirring in his groin when she stretched her arms overhead and exposed the long line of her bruised neck. 

Elka stiffened when she rolled to her side and found his eyes on her. 

“Are you feeling better?”

She nodded even as she winced at the twinge of pain that shot through her shoulder. 

“Hungry?”

She shook her head again, “not really, but I’m thirsty.”

“There are some bottles of water in that bag.”

He waited to speak until she uncapped the name brand plastic bottle and quickly drank a third of it.

“Tell me about your marriage.”

Elka nearly choked on her mouthful of water, “what exactly do you want to know?”

“Where did you meet?”

“An ALS benefit gala.”

“Was it love at first sight?”

She looked up, plainly annoyed. “No. What are you getting out of this?” she said with clear irritation as she over-annunciated each word and added. “What’s the reward?”

“You’re the reward,” he thought to himself and glanced at the open folder on his desk. 

He looked at her where she waited, simmering, waiting for an answer.

Bane smiled, “we can discuss that at a later date. For now, you should try and eat something.” He rose fluidly from his chair, “I’ll return shortly.” Elka watched him leave and heard the lock engage. She stared at the door long after he had departed. 

She rolled back onto her back and groaned as she covered her face with her hands. “How is this happening,” she thought and pushed her hair off her forehead. 

Elka was staring at a crack in the ceiling when Bane returned with a piping hot, Styrofoam container of noodles, swimming flaccidly in a salty chicken broth. She was so entranced by the rivulet in the ceiling, that she didn’t notice when he returned and closed the short distance between them.

She was startled when his boots broke into her concentration on the crack. He waited until she sat up and then took a seat next to her and watched her greedily accept the noodle cup.

He hid a flare of amusement at her fierce hunger. She caught him watching and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Elka averted her gaze past his shoulder, embarrassed at what a sight she must be. 

“Do you love your husband Elka?”

“Good god,” she scoffed, nearly choking on the soup. “What’s the interest in my marriage?”

“You just haven’t asked about him, seems like you don’t miss him,” he said casually.

Calvin and Elka’s marriage was still young but as calm as a torrential tropical storm.

“So, do you love him?” he repeated.

She thought about saying of course and saying the right words but her mind interjected, “why not be honest?” 

She drained the last of the chicken broth and set the empty container on the floor. 

“I don’t know, we probably shouldn’t have gotten married but it’s what happened and now it has been a few years.”

“Why did you marry in the first place?” 

His interest grew as she looked for her words after another wordless shrug.

“We got drunk at the gala and I got pregnant,” she admitted. 

“You have a child?” 

“I had a miscarriage and ended up needing to have a hysterectomy. It was for the best,” she said and shook her head.

Just the sight of her raw honesty, gave further flickering life to the recesses of his heart and warm stirrings in his belly.

“None of that sounds like a good marriage.”

Elka shrugged again, “Cal has his moments.”

“Like what?” he prodded.

“He hasn’t physically hurt me,” she said icily and spoke as she rubbed at her sore, bruised neck.

“I regret that,” he murmured.

“You do?” she asked with genuine surprise.

“Yes, very much.”

“Do you regret anything else?”

Bane stared at her for a few heartbeats. He let his eyes roam over any bit of exposed skin and nearly forced her to flush with his heavy gaze.

“No,” he said on an exhale, “was it that bad?”

“Don’t look at me like that or ask me that.”

“Do you prefer the Good Justice between your thighs?”

“Don’t call him that and no I don’t prefer him,” she hissed. 

She struggled and failed to hide a wince as she shifted uncomfortably, her lower body aching. She desperately wanted to clean herself. She didn’t like the conversational terrain and felt like she was talking herself into a bear trap.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Not permanently.”

He stood suddenly, and she involuntarily flinched.

“I’ve been trying to convey something to you,” he started before trailing off into silence. She shook her head, confusion painted across her face as he continued walking from behind the desk and towards her. 

“What are you trying to say?” 

He didn’t know how to express his needs, he had never had to ask permission, took what he wanted. As he stared at her neck, he struggled to find words that he had never spoken before. Affection was a foreign concept and sex had always been a physiological act. Perfunctory, near autonomous and he never had to get permission. 

As Elka blinked rapidly while Bane struggled to find his words, in a different part of the sewer, Esau tapped out Talia’s phone number into his satellite phone. She answered on the fifth ring.

“Yes?”

Esau took a deep breath, “there might be a problem.”

“What?”

“He’s distracted.”

“Who?”

“Bane, ma’am, Bane is distracted by the Exchange woman. I’m concerned his priorities are out of order.”

Talia was silent for a while, “thank you Esau. I’ll call and make my own evaluation. Keep your eyes open.”

Esau ended the call and went back to reviewing pages of Wayne’s companies financial innerworkings. As he typed in command after command and began moving large amount of money, Talia dialed Bane.

Back at the other end of the sewer, Bane finally alighted on a way to start his sentence when his phone gave a shrill ring. He growled when he saw it was Talia on the other end. 

Bane looked down briefly, not letting Elka see the regret in his eyes and excused himself with an unintelligible grumble. 

Elka watched the door shut once again, leaving her alone in the sparse room. She strained her ears but couldn’t discern the phone conversation outside of the door. 

On the other side of the steel riveted door, Bane could detect suspicion in Talia’s tone as she questioned him. 

“Is the judge’s wife still alive?”

“Yes,” he grunted.

“Why? What information is she still withholding?”

“She is a good news distraction until we can fully secure Wayne enterprises,” Bane started to say before Talia cut him off.

“Kill the corrupt cunt, I want to see the discovery of her body on the news tonight.”

Bane was silent until Talia spoke again, the venom in her voice potent even over the phone. “Do not disappoint me.”

Talia hung up before Bane could reply, her out of control ego and toxic narcissism really had her thinking that she owned every fiber of his being. 

Bane let the phone drop from his large hands and crack on the cold floor, he ground out the plastic and glass under his heel as though he was grinding out a cigarette. 

He let out a slow breath before he rejoined Elka in the dark room. 

“Are you okay?” Elka asked at the unreadable expression in her eyes and what little she could see of his face.

He ignored her question. “May I touch you?” Bane asked in a ragged whisper, never taking his eyes off the darkness he had created on her neck as he took slow steps toward her, closing the distance between them.

Elka moved backwards from him, as far as she could manage when he sat on the edge of the mattress and patted the space next to him. 

“Come here.”

She was frozen in place and just stared at the space he patted more insistently.

“Please.”

She stiffly scooted towards him and eventually settled down, further away from him than he wanted.

“What would it take for you to want me?”

Bane’s words startled her; she felt another wave of dizziness. “What?” was all she lamely managed, not meeting his searching gaze.

“What would it take for you to be with me, to want me?”

“I don’t know what to say to that, I don’t understand?” Elka stammered.

“It’s not complicated,” he murmured as he gently reached out a hand and traced his fingertips along her jawline. He capitalized on her shift of attention to his light touch and slid close and pulled her into his arms, crushing her against his chest.

She remained absolutely still in his warm embrace, his question echoing in her skull. She took a deep breath as she counted the steady rise and fall of each of his breaths. She counted six of his inhalations before speaking. 

“I don’t, I can’t.” Elka stumbled over her words and tried to stand up and slip out of his arms. “No,” he whispered urgently and closed his arms around her, trapping her against his broad chest. 

“Tell me you’ll think about it,” he practically demanded as he felt a spike in his desire to possess her again. 

He felt her nod against his chest and mumbled unintelligibly.

Bane loosened his arms and let her sit slightly away from him, still close enough that he could sweep her back into her embrace.

“I will,” she murmured. “Just agree,” she mentally scolded herself.

Bane picked up the half-empty bottle of water he had drugged and passed it to her. She gratefully accepted the bottle and he watched as she noisily drained the water, the tranquilizers filling her body. 

“I think sleep might be the right answer,” he said in a soothing tone as her whole body sagged. Bane cradled her unconscious form and pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “Just sleep for a while,” he whispered as he wrapped his arms and settled them both under the bed linen. 

As Elka was firmly in a narcotic stranglehold, Bane traced his hand down the length of her arm until he reached the fingers of her left hand. He rubbed the pad of his thumb on the diamond that sat obscenely erect in the center of the platinum wedding band. “The money spent on this could’ve preserved a third of the dwindling rain forest.” 

He listened as her breathing deepened and smoothed out, he squeezed her left hand, feeling the cool touch of the metal against his warm palm.

He moved his hand back to slide around her waist and squeezed her closer to the front of his body. He pressed his masked face to the curve of her neck. Bane closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, pulling the scent of her fully into his lungs. 

“What will it take?” he whispered against her skin. 

While Elka slept deeply in the arms of opiate bliss, Bane adjusted the pillow more evenly under her head and left her locked in the small, dank room. 

He walked purposefully to where Esau was continuing to comb through Judge Green’s past tax filings and property management documents. 

Perched on the corner of the desk was an open laptop with the Faux & Pals News Hour airing. The breaking news was an interview with the dapperly dressed Chief Justice Calvin Green. The segment started with the perky blonde anchor Bethany Ann Blaze; her face molded into one of absolute grave concern as she addressed the primarily right-wing audience. 

Bane watched impassively as Bethany introduced the Good Justice and the reward that he was offering for information leading to the whereabouts of his beloved abducted wife.

He had turned his attention to a stack of papers that outlined the Green’s stock portfolio when Esau’s low voice broke into his reading.

“Was it necessary to kill three good soldiers.”

“Yes.”

“Are you still fully committed to the execution of the plan?”

“Yes.”

“And what about the whore you have hidden away?”

Bane gathered up the folders and looked over at Esau. “Have you forgotten your orders?”

“No.”

“No, what?” 

“No….Sir,” Esau spit out.

“I’ll be off-site for a couple hours, contact me only on the sat phone,” Bane growled and left Esau to the company of the high-definition perky breasted Bethany Blaze interviewing the terribly concerned Good Justice. 

Esau glared at Bane’s back as he abruptly walked away, his disapproval palpable.

Bane knew the second that the door closed behind him that Talia was going to dispatch someone to kill Elka and it could even be Esau that had been charged with the task.  
Bane knew that he had to gather her up and leave if she was to retain her life.

Bane walked rapidly to the dim room that contained Elka’s unconscious form. He gathered up a selection of printed papers and glossy photos, along with traveling supplies into several large tan-colored duffle bags. 

His urgency grew as he wrapped the bed linen around Elka until she resembled a beautiful mummy and hurriedly carried her and the bulging bags to a narrow, spiral staircase. The creaky metal door at the bottom of the stairs opened to an underground parking structure. He shifted Elka in his arms and unlocked the door to an early seventies step-side truck, the heavy metal door slammed shut with a resounding boom. Bane quickly settled her on the leather bench seat and moved swiftly behind the steering wheel.

The stock engine rumbled noisily to life under the burnt orange colored hood, he navigated the truck out of the garage and up a ramp that led to daylight. His neck muscles threatened to seize on him with the frequency of looking up at the rearview mirror and over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. He let himself relax for half a second when he eventually merged onto the fast-moving freeway. 

He glanced over at Elka where she was slumped on the seat, “just a little while longer,” he whispered to her as she slept. He looked at his watch and pressed the accelerator to the floor as he patted her limp left hand, “just a little while longer.” 

Bane’s mind took advantage of the quiet cab of the truck, his Talia’s voice lambasted him. “What are you doing? You’re breaking protocol, have you forgotten everything?”

Bane clenched his teeth until his jaw popped and glanced over at Elka’s sleeping form and flipped on the headlights as he navigated a newly paved highway interchange and turned on the radio. He twisted the dial and soon, a classic blues song softly combated the silence.

Elka began to stir a few hours later into the lengthy drive, she swam to consciousness and first registered a sultry voiced singer belting out adorations for alcohol and her lover’s good hands. 

She shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose when she realized that she was in a moving vehicle. Elka looked over at Bane, his gaze was focused on the road as he steered the truck through the winding roads that were thickly lined with eucalyptus trees and sprawling blackberry bushes.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he spared her a glance.

She looked out the windshield and at the stunning view before answering. 

“I’m okay, where are we going?”

“The need for relocation became necessary ahead of schedule, this will be temporary,” he finally said after a lengthy pause and pointed to a State Park sign on the right-hand side of the road.

Elka’s eyes looked to where he pointed, recognizing one of her favorite places to hike. Bane glanced at her profile, happy to see a small smile tug at the corners of her lips.

“You’re familiar with this place.”

“Very, I love it here,” she said almost excitedly before swallowing back her exuberance of seeing somewhere she enjoyed, somewhere she felt safe. 

He slowed the truck through the campground’s entrance and paid the camping fees with cash into a self-serve kiosk, the state saved money by not having to have someone posted at the gate in the off-season. 

The sprawling campgrounds were unusually vacant for the time of year and Bane was able to secure a secluded spot.

He engaged the emergency brake and cut the engine. 

Elka watched him get out of the truck and walk to her side of the vehicle, she hid a smile when he pulled open the heavy door for her. The tranquilizer still floated around her system and impaired her depth perception. She nearly stumbled stepping out of the truck and he quickly scooped her upright in his strong arms. 

He wrapped his arms tight around her and pulled her close as he smoothed his hands down to the curve of her lower back and began to knead his fingers up her spinal column. He lightly massaged the rounded knob of each vertebrate. 

“That feels nice,” she thought and almost said out loud and immediately tried to shift out of his powerful embrace. He felt a shiver run through her. “It’s going to get cold tonight,” he whispered against the crown of her head. “Rest. I’m going to set up camp,” he added and had to force himself to release and step away her.

Elka let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding when he stepped away from her. She watched him begin to unpack the truck. 

She yawned deeply and stretched her arms overhead as she watched Bane begin to assemble the tent. Elka pulled a vinyl bag from the truck bed and walked towards him. 

“How long are we staying here?”

Bane half-turned to see her standing next to him, holding the vinyl bag that contained a plush, insulated sleeping bag. 

“A few days at minimum.”

“Is there another sleeping bag besides this one?”

He smoothed his hands over the military-issued canvas tent. “No.” 

She dropped the rolled fabric and crossed her arms over her chest.

“It’s cozy enough for two,” he said slowly, making it seem like an extra-long word. Infusing each of the letters with heat as he raked his gaze up and down her body. 

Elka shook her head wordlessly and stalked back to the parked truck, “why the fuck is this happening to me?”

Bane turned and watched her yank open the passenger side door and root around in the plastic grocery bag. She emerged with a new bottle of water and blueberry pecan granola bar. 

While Bane finished assembling the tent, stretching the canvas taut and checking for any holes or snags, Elka proceeded to walk around their campsite clearing and retrieved twigs and knotty wood sticks for a fire. 

Bane was pleased to see that she wasn’t simmering by the truck anymore. He watched her pile the wood and dry grass and strike the head of a creamlike orange-colored match and hold it to the haphazardly stacked flammables. 

Elka rubbed her hands over the emerging warmth from the birth of the flames and looked over to find his eyes on her. She felt the weight of his gaze and had a sudden rush of remembrance at being trapped under his body, looking into his eyes from inches away as he buried his rigid member inside her, filling her body. 

She quickly looked down at the epicenter of the healthily burning fire, feeling the dull ache in the center of her intimacy. 

Bane could hear the crackling of the small twigs as they were consumed by flames and felt the heat reach his body. He watched her sit on a fallen log that doubled as a bench.  
He circled the tent one last time before unzipping and tossing the sleeping bag inside it. He settled on the log bench across from her, “thank you for getting the fire going.”

“It was partially self-serving.”

Bane smirked, “thank you, regardless of the reason.”

Elka frowned as she subconsciously massaged her shoulder, she was nowhere near successful in easing the knot that was under her skin. Bane watched her continue to knead at her shoulder and wince as she pressed her fingertips into her skin. He walked over to where she sat on the smooth log bench.

“May I help?” he asked lowly.


	8. Just to Sleep

Elka stopped probing her shoulder and looked across the flames at him. “Okay,” she said quietly and held her breath as he slipped onto the bench behind her. She shifted a little when he settled behind her, his powerful thighs pressing on either side of her. 

An appreciative sound escaped Elka’s lips as he moved his strong hands on her neck and shoulders until he begin to feel the slightest bit of tension dissolve. 

Her muscular pleasure soon bled away to be replaced by a mixture of fear and the unknowable future when his touch became more insistent as he dropped his hands to her waist, pulling her lower body closer. Elka stiffened in his arms as she felt him grow hard against her, his cock grew painfully rigid against her bottom.

“Go unroll the sleeping bag,” he growled raggedly.

Bane dropped his head and buried his masked face against the back of her neck when she remained silent and statue-still in his arms.

Elka shook her head and tried to squirm out of his impossibly suffocating embrace, “no.” 

His exhales were furiously rushed and hot inside his mask making moisture build up against the titanium mesh. 

“I thought we had an understanding,” Bane murmured musically and slid one of his hands low to cup her femininity through her pants. 

“You said you weren’t going to rush me, I thought we had an agreement,” she managed as he began to move his palm in slow circles over her femininity at the apex of her thighs.

“You had to have known I was just trying to assuage your fears Mrs. Green,” Bane murmured musically as he was torn between the overwhelming urge to strip her bare and memorize every square inch of her naked body or quell her fear with another hopeful sounding but empty promise.

“I’m trying hard to not insist,” he continued raggedly as his hands began to move erratically over her body. Elka gasped when he slipped a hand under her shirt and felt him began to squeeze her breast.

“I’m trying,” he groaned as he couldn’t fight his desire any longer and pushed her to the ground as gently as he could manage with his fierce need to feel her naked skin and possess her. 

“I won’t apologize for getting you wrapped up in this because the moment I set my eyes on you, I knew you were the one,” he grunted as he pressed a hand to the middle of her back and hurriedly unzipped his pants and fumble for his hardening masculinity. 

“The one what?” Elka asked on a dry cough as the metallic sound of his zipper was amplified in tandem with her rapid, irregular heartbeat. 

Bane ignored her question and freed his throbbing rigidity, she tried to move away from him and gripped the top of her pants when he tugged on them.

“Does it have to be now? I need to clean-up, and I’m,” Elka started to protest before he yanked more insistently at her pants. 

“You’re what?” he whispered into her ear and hooked a thumb in the roomy elastic waistband of her plain panties. 

“Please,” she said breathlessly, dropping her hand to his wrist, desperate to stop his further movement. “I’m sore,” she added in a rush. 

Bane paused his hand against her, he could feel the tension filling her. 

“Do you need medical attention?”

Elka kept her hand firmly gripped onto his thick forearm, “no, I just need a little time.” He could hear her breathing rapidly increase as she tried to keep from panicking at his silence. 

“Do I frighten you?” he murmured against the back of her skull, desperate to press his bare lips against the tangled silken strands. 

Elka couldn’t find any words, she could only hear her pulse pounding in her ears.

“Are you afraid to answer me?”

She was only capable of nodding and trying not to focus on his rigid cock that remained firmly pressed against her bottom. 

“How can I alleviate your fear?”

Elka’s mind furiously tried to formulate a coherent reply as she felt overwhelmed by the immense strength he possessed. “Not like this,” she finally pleaded as a pine needle tickled her nose. “Not on the ground.”

“Then go and unroll the sleeping bag,” he managed on a heavy melodic moan.

She felt tears threatening to form and half-crawled away from him before getting shakily to her feet. Elka nearly stumbled the few steps to the tent and slipped through the canvas flaps. She tried to keep her hands from shaking as she pulled the sleeping bag from its zippered bag and began to smooth the matte black fabric. The bedding was heavy and designed to offer protection from subzero temperatures.

Elka glanced up when Bane joined her in the tent and quickly looked away from him, not wanting to get caught in the stranglehold of his glance.

Bane stood and watched her as her hands gave the barest of trembles as she plucked invisible lint off the nylon fabric. 

Elka’s breath slowed to the barest of inhalations as he started to remove each article of clothing he was wearing. 

“I don’t want you to think about the past anymore,” he murmured lowly as he stripped out of his form-fitting thermal shirt. 

“What does that mean exactly?” Elka finally managed to ask when she lifted her eyes and all she saw for a few salivating heartbeats was his naked, muscular torso.

“It means,” Bane started to say and paused in relief that she hadn’t tried to bolt away before he continued. “It means that I want us to start over, put our violent introduction in the past and begin our life together right now.”

Elka didn’t blink as she stared up at Bane, trapped in his gaze as he continued on a musical whisper as he fully unzipped his pants and stepped out of them.

“I know that I can’t take your affection by force.”

Elka cleared her throat as Bane added in a ragged groan. “I can’t force you to have genuine feelings for me as I do for you, but I promise that you’ll be safe, and I’ll do anything I can to earn your trust, to mean something to you.”

“What now….what now…what now?!?” her mind repeated as it reeled frantically. “What does that mean?” she whispered aloud.

Bane suppressed a groan of relief when she spoke coherently. His desire was so strong that his gut ached, and he spoke carefully, trying to not think of filling and possessing her body. “I want us to completely start over from here.”

Elka didn’t answer but couldn’t help but let her eyes drop from his and make a slow lazy trail down his heavily scarred and naked body. She unconsciously bit her lower lip and felt a blush fill her face as her eyes dipped lower to his hardening masculinity. 

Bane’s eyes glazed over with lust and he sank to his knees in front of her with deliberate slowness.

“What do you think about that,” Bane murmured and cupped his palm to her face, his warm rough skin in stark contrast to her smoothness. 

“Be cautious,” she thought before she murmured. “Does it honestly matter what I think or say?”

“Honestly?” Bane finally asked.

“Yes,” Elka said on a nod, afraid of the answer she already knew.

“I would like things to be smooth between us, but your new life really did begin when we officially met in person.” 

He reached for her and settled his hands on her hips, “I want you naked,” he whispered raggedly and tugged at her long-sleeved shirt. She allowed him to pull and tug at her clothing and expose more skin to his greedy gaze, until she was just as bare as he was. 

Bane pulled back the sleeping bag and settled on the thermal lining, “come here.”

Elka felt a preemptive ache inside when she dropped her eyes and found his cock rigid with enthusiasm. She hesitatingly settled next to him before he aggressively yanked their naked bodies closer together and pushed her onto her back and slid his hands under her bottom, shifting her closer to him.

“It’s ultimately up to you how this will be,” he murmured in a low musical whisper as he smoothed his hand down to cup her bare femininity. “I don’t want this to be bad for you,” he continued in a ragged groan. 

Elka felt the sheer strength reverberating in his electric touch on her body, she had recognized a certain futility when she had first laid eyes upon him. 

Bane held her gaze as he gently nudged her thighs apart and felt his resolve dissipate completely as he grasped his hardened length and positioned himself at her opening.

“I don’t regret this,” he growled lowly and pushed his rigid length inside her. Elka inhaled sharply as he fully sheathed himself, her thighs began to quiver around him. He slowly moved his hardness until he had built a steady rhythm of plunging in and out of her body, her intimate folds growing wet and slick under his rigorous movement. 

“I always longed for someone like you, but knew it would never happen,” he wheezed and thrust into her as deeply as he could until their intimate flesh kissed.

“What kind of person am I?” she gasped under his enthusiastic pounding pace. 

Elka struggled to get control of her breathing as he lifted a hand from its death grip on the soft flesh of her hip to fumble at the straps and clasps of his mask. 

Bane haphazardly tugged his mask free before he traced his fingertips along her jawline. He slowed his pace as he plunged into her, letting himself pause a full three seconds each time he was fully sheathed inside her wet center. He trailed his touch down her neck and across her shoulders before speaking. 

“You’re beautiful,” he started and slid his hand down her smooth forearm to close around her slim wrist. “Irreplaceable,” he whispered and pressed his lips to her palm. 

“Don’t do that,” she muttered and tried to yank her hand away from him. 

“Do what?” 

“Talk to me like that.”

“How am I talking to you?”

“Like you haven’t hurt me.”

Bane’s eyes bored into hers, “I regret hurting you.”

Elka narrowed her eyes, she didn’t see or hear a lie. 

“Are you going to eventually kill me?”

He struggled to not show a reaction to her words. “No, no,” he said quickly and urgently squeezed her hand. “No, I want you,” he whispered and returned his lips to her palm. 

Elka swallowed hard, “what did you say?” She knew what he had said and was hoping to buy time to formulate a reply. He didn’t give her much time to think as he rapidly answered. 

“I said I want you,” he repeated squeezing her hand to emphasize his words. 

“What?” she practically sputtered. “You haven’t know me long enough to say something so ridiculous?”

Elka felt her chest grow tight as Bane dropped his face to hover above hers, feeling his large body threaten to consume hers as he lifted a hand to cradle her chin and jaw. “I don’t regret this either,” he said on a ragged whisper and pressed his lips to hers.

Elka couldn’t shake his fingers free from her chin, she pushed and clawed at his wrist. Bane showed zero intention of stopping as he tightened his grip on her chin and used his free hand to pull her closer. He lifted his lips when he felt her breath hitch in her chest, he found himself looking down at her eyes wide and unblinking, tears streaming freely down her face.

“I’m….,” Bane started to say and lessened his grip on her. “Just don’t,” she interrupted him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered raggedly before he licked his lips, relishing in the taste of her.

“No,” she shouted, “You’ve taken too much,” she added as she struggled in his solid grasp.

Bane captured her flapping arms and pinned her wrists over her head, squeezing her tight enough that bruises would form within a few hours.

“Calm yourself,” he whispered as he lowered his face to the curve of her neck, inhaling deeply of the mixture of her fear and anxiety for the present moment to the vast unknown. 

“Pace yourself,” he thought as he pressed his face into the curve of her neck. The soft strands of her hair tickled his nose as he continued to thrust urgently. His lust surged at her sounds of her vulnerable whimpers as she struggled underneath him. 

Bane lifted his face from the warm curve of her neck. “All mine,” he moaned as his lips hovered over hers. 

Elka squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away as their bodies kissed with each of his deep thrusts. “Look at me,” he whispered.

She wordlessly squeezed her eyes shut tighter and a couple tears leaked from between her dark lashes. 

He gripped her chin and turned her face towards him. “Look at me,” he raggedly demanded and paused at the moment he was completely filling her. She opened her eyes as her body still ached in its disapproval at having to stretch to accommodate his invading fullness. 

“Can you see yourself being mine?” he grunted and reveled in her breath hitching in her chest and the ragged moan she tried to suppress. 

“I’m not some fucking object for you to collect,” she gasped and tried to ignore the growing tsunami wave of ecstasy that threatened to drown her. 

“I know you’re not, but will you give me all of yourself?” he panted as his physical pain began to encroach upon his nervous system. 

Bane kept his rhythm slow and even, luxuriating in the feeling of sinking into her hot, tight center as he seemed to see inside her core. Elka felt her body actively betray her as his touch elicited lightning strikes of pleasure throughout her body. He felt a jolt through his body when he coaxed a pleasurable sounding moan from her as he licked a line up her neck and pressed his lips firmly over the large pulse in her neck. 

“Will you?” he said on a staccato grunt as he began to feel his control begin to wane and his need for pain relief rising.

Elka reached up and hesitatingly placed her fingertips on his strong jawline. She traced along his cheekbones and down the slope of his nose as he steadily pushed his engorged length in and out of her. 

“Yes,” she said raggedly as he fumbled his mask back into place and took several noisy breaths and let the opiate inhalant coat his nervous system in a chemically numbing shroud.   
Bane groaned and shuddered as his orgasm overwhelmed his senses and for a few seconds all he felt was her intimate walls squeezing his cock as he spilled his hot come inside her. 

She pressed her hands against his chest and could feel his heart beating strongly under the layers of dense musculature as his breathing returned to normal. 

“Will you stop breaking my shoes?” 

“I will,” Bane said with a melodic chuckle as he pulled his softening cock out of her and settled along her side. 

Elka couldn’t stop herself from glancing down at his rigidity that glistened from being inside her as she allowed him to pull her into his powerful embrace.

“Where do we go from here?” she murmured as she rested the side of her face against his chest. 

Bane didn’t want to tell her that he wasn’t exactly certain but told her what truth he knew. “We’ll stay here tomorrow and then head east the following morning.”

“East to where?”

Bane put his hand over hers, trapping her fingertips against his chest. She could feel his warm exhale through the front of his mask as he ignored her question.

“Do you miss the life you had with the Good Justice?”

“Oh, for the love of god, please stop calling him that. What is east of here?”

“Do you miss your penthouse, sports cars, being on the arm of the Good Justice?” He emphasized each word with a squeeze around her hand. 

“Stop with that please.”

“If you kiss me, I’ll stop calling him that.”

“Okay,” she finally managed after nearly three minutes of tense silence as she swallowed hard and his hand stilled over hers.

Elka watched him fumble with the various clasps and remove his mask with one hand for the second time. 

She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and shifted closer as she angled her face up towards him. Elka paused, her lips hovering in front of his. Bane inhaled sharply against her closer proximity and managed to suppress a shudder of anticipation. “What is east of here?”

“Home,” he said quickly, barely able to restrain himself with their lips just a heartbeat apart.

“Please don’t be afraid of me Elka,” he whispered before he dropped his head and pressed his lips urgently to hers. He spoke in between dragging his lips from her mouth and down her neck, flicking his tongue against the soft hollow at the base of her throat before moving back to greedily find her mouth.

Bane luxuriated in the feel of her lips around his, wanting to devour her. He had to fight every cell in his body where their lips touched. He fought to not wrap her up and return her kiss until they were both breathless. 

“What’s in the north east?” she asked as his breath was hot against her skin. 

“Eventually the Atlantic,” he said with a gentle smile over the large pulse in her neck and tucked her body close. 

They laid together in the comfortable silence for a few minutes, Bane felt some of the tension draining from her and squeezed his arms around her as he asked. “What made you   
agreeable so fast?”

“It wasn’t and isn’t without effort.” She gave a humorless chuckle as she added, “I needed to start trying to…believe you.”

“Do you believe me? Trust me?”

Elka closed her eyes as he traced along her cheekbones and over her eyelids. “There’s no wrong answer,” he whispered.

“I’m trying but I’m still feeling cautious as hell,” she murmured and opened her eyes to meet his gaze.

“That’s understandable,” he said as he traced the outline of her lips.

Elka felt her chest grow tight at the nearly palpable weight of his gaze. She had to fight to not try and leap free, the tent was suffocating her. She watched him secure his mask back in place and adjust the titanium breathing apparatus before she spoke.

“I really need to use the bathroom, I’m sure there’s a tree or two nearby.”

She couldn’t see the smile behind his mask as he eased his arms from around her, allowing her to freely move. Elka sat up and pulled the long-sleeved shirt from the ground and quickly slipped it over her head. Bane watched her turn and reach for her pants and let his eyes move across her. His gaze froze when it landed on the soft skin of her inner thigh and what looked like a scant amount of blood smeared on the smooth skin. 

He looked up and met Elka’s eyes, her expression unreadable as she hurriedly yanked the sweatpants up to her waist. 

Bane felt a flash of nervousness; a foreign feeling and he cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”

“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” she said quickly and darted from the canvas flaps. Bane slipped into his own clothes and found her rooting through the plastic bag and found a small rectangular package of store brand tissues. 

He began to follow her as she walked toward a thicket of lush-leaved trees. “Can I have a bit of privacy please; I swear I’m not going to run away in the woods with no shoes.”  
“I’ll be right here,” he said and watched her pop behind a tree. The sound of her urinary stream blended with the sounds of the rushing river and flying insects. Elka bit her lip at the ache in her lower body, the temperature had dropped, and her urine steamed on the forest floor. 

Bane watched her emerge from behind the tree and waited until she reached him before walking back to the camp site. “Better?” he asked, looking over at her. 

“Mostly,” she shrugged and neither of them spoke further. Elka settled on the log bench and watched Bane reinvigorate fiery life to the flames by feeding it small sticks and dry brush. 

She brushed her fingers through her hair, making a face at the oiliness in each strand and the grit stuck to her scalp. 

“What’s on your mind?” he asked as he settled on the wood bench across from her.

“It’s a stupid thing to even be thinking,” she said blowing out a sharp breath before adding. “I would just really like to clean-up; I think we’re near some hot springs. 

Bane glanced at the trees, their colors changing as dusk fell, “now?”

She shook her head. “I’d rather not navigate this in the dark, the morning would be better.”

He looked at her across the tall flames, “morning it is.”

His thoughts were jumbled, “say something comforting.” 

Elka was staring off into space when his voice shook her to reality.

“Come here,” he said and patted the space on the bench next to him.

She blinked at him slowly. “At some point, you need to really decide and then follow-through on this whole fight or acceptance. Is this the moment I have to decide?” her mind asked. 

He patted the space more insistently and she slowly rose and walked towards him. 

As Elka settled next to his formidable frame and bathed in the heat from the fire, back in their Gotham City penthouse suite, Justice Calvin Green adjusted his tie after finishing his twentieth phone interview. He checked his watch and dabbed an obscenely priced cologne at his collar. The interviews and attention had filled him with energy, and he was going to go have drinks with a new intern, he couldn’t remember her name, but it wouldn’t matter. 

Calvin had a fleeting thought to Elka and her fate, but it faded when he thought of the pear-shaped intern who was known for blowjobs that could cave in your skull. “She’s probably fine,” he thought as his eyes landed on their wedding photo, proudly displayed on the granite mantle. The police had told him to keep his cellphone close by in case there was a ransom call. Calvin had nodded in a convincing manner and demonstrated what seemed like genuine concern but was secretly crossing all his fingers that his phone never rang. 

As Calvin waited in the bar of the five-star hotel for his happy-ending evening to begin, back at the state park, under the same sky, Elka settled next to Bane on the massive bench. They shared a quiet moment together before he reached over and gently grasped her left hand. “I can’t understand exactly what you’re feeling but I know it must be close to catastrophic.” He squeezed her hand tighter when she offered an agreeable chuckle before he added.

“But I’m going to try and give you what you need, what you want.”

Elka stared down at their clasped hands, before she could muster any kind of reply, he added. “I just need something from you in the immediacy.”

“What’s that?” 

“I would like you to take off your wedding ring,” he stated with zero inflection.

She turned towards him, her hand still firmly in his. “Why?”

“Because I don’t like looking at it or thinking of you taking vows with another.”

Elka nearly flinched at the wet, open rawness to his words and the naked vulnerability in his dark eyes. 

She tugged her hand free of his and fumbled at the gratuitously priced ring, “take it then.”

She dropped the ring into his open palm with a shaking hand, “you’re sure?” he asked as the ring landed in the center of his palm. “It’s yours,” she said quickly, her breath catching as he recaptured her hand and spoke urgently, huskily. “I would like to replace it with one of my choosing.”

“Don’t say anything, think on it,” he whispered and pressed two fingertips to her lips, basking in the soft feel of her flesh. “You’re going to get cold with no shoes, let’s get you back under the covers.”

“Just to sleep,” Elka quickly replied, her tone even too shrill for her ears. 

“Just to sleep,” he parroted gently.


	9. Gone

Elka yawned deeply and trudged back to the tent, settling back into the sleeping bag. Bane adjusted his arms around her and pulled her close, snug against the front of his body. 

She could feel the warmth from his broad chest and torso through her shirt.

Bane smiled against the top of her head and felt her tension fall away as she descended through the layers of sleep. 

Bane eventually fell into a light sleep, waking often and frantically needing to ensure she was still in his arms. He awoke too many times to count, afraid that she was gone, that he was alone. 

Each time he awoke abruptly with his heart pounding and a light sweat blooming on his hot skin, he would bury his face against her neck or scalp and breathe in her scent. He held her intoxicating aroma in his lungs and would lull himself back to sleep stroking the curve of her lower back. 

As they slept, back in Gotham City, Esau had made the discovery that Bane was gone. He fumbled his phone as he dialed Talia.

“They’re gone,” Esau said as soon as Talia answered.

“Gone? Gone where?”

“I don’t know where, he took a vehicle and that finance bitch.”

Talia was quiet so long that Esau was certain the call had been dropped. “Find them,” she finally said without a readable tone to her voice.

Esau ended the call and went back to Bane’s deserted dank room, he combed everything left behind for any clue as to where Bane had fled to with that woman. 

Esau shook his head and swore under his breath, he had known Elka was going to be trouble the moment he saw her. He knew Bane had been lost to her spell when he first spoke to her. 

As Esau scrambled throughout the sewer’s twisted infrastructure and tried to find the first of many breadcrumbs that would lead to Bane, back in the state campgrounds, he became aware of her growing wakefulness and remained still. He kept his breathing even as she shifted in the circle of his warm arms and slowly extricated herself from his powerful embrace.

He opened his eyes to slits and watched her slip through out through the canvas tent flaps, he strained his ears and heard her rummaging in the plastic bag. 

Bane held his breath and peeked through the narrow opening in the tent and watched her pull a fresh pack of cigarettes open, the green foil, a dull emerald under the night sky. He watched her lay back on the wide, wooden log, her hair spilling into a silken veil underneath her. He held his breath as the sounds of her soft crying reached his ears, pausing only when she lifted the cigarette to her lips and took a deep inhale. Her tears continued upon each acrid exhale. 

Elka heard a small branch snap under his feet and didn’t bother to take her eyes off the night sky packed with vividly sparkling stars. She sniffed hard and wiped away the bloated tears that sat on her flushed cheeks.

“Talk to me,” he murmured gently and began to coax life back into the smoldering remnants of the fire. 

She surprised them both with a harsh laugh and pulled the smoke deep into her lungs before speaking. 

“I don’t really miss Calvin, but I knew what to expect from our life, there was a schedule of sorts. All of this though,” she scoffed and gestured towards him, “I don’t know what to do with all this.”

Bane waited as she seemed to gather her next set of words and continued to bring the fire back to life.

“I handle obscene amounts of money, federal paperwork, people’s life savings and this has me feeling completely helpless and shattered.”

“That’s understandable,” he finally said. “This is all a little unorthodox,” he said wryly. 

Elka stubbed out her cigarette and genuinely laughed, “now that’s a gentle euphemism,” she said as she shook another stick of tobacco free from its foil pack and quickly lit the end. 

Bane arched an eyebrow and gestured at her burning cigarette, “feeling stressed I see.”

She fought to not roll her eyes like a juvenile and instead shook her head, “yes, yes, I know it’s bad, but I am definitely stressed, old enough to buy them and there’s always worse habits.”

“There are indeed,” he said and tossed a few branches on the fire. “I wasn’t critiquing your habits.”

“So, have you gone sort of, AWOL?” 

Her sudden and stark question caught him off balance and he stumbled over his words in a rush to reply.

“I’m not with the military.”

“You know what I meant, have you cut and run on a contract, you must’ve been hired by someone probably more dangerous than the military?”

“I suppose I have,” he stated honestly.

“How much of your decision to do that, had to do with me?”

“All of it,” he said with zero hesitation. 

Elka didn’t have time to react when he was suddenly on his feet and in front of her. Bane aggressively yanked her to her feet and trapped her in his embrace. “I’d move the earth and sky for your heart,” he said on a groan as he fumbled his mask free and tried to capture her lips under his.

He gave a low melodic growl composed entirely of animalistic, feral desire when she ducked her head and his lips landed on her cheekbone. 

“Why does a kiss mean so much to you?” Bane rasped.

“Because a kiss is supposed to mean something, not casual and I could ask you the same thing,” she babbled. 

“It’s important because,” he started and trailed off to run his fingers through her hair, luxuriating in the tangled strands, feeling a stray pine needle here and there.

“Because why?” 

“Because I’ve never shared my heart with anyone, intimacy is a foreign word. I don’t know how to not take what I want.”

“Because I’m not accustomed to having to ask for anything,” he finally admitted.

Elka surprised herself more when she shifted in his embrace and slid her arms up and around his neck, she rose up on her tip toes, her breath hot against his face when she spoke.

“Ask me,” she whispered, her lips hovering over his.

“Will you kiss me?” he asked without question.

“Yes,” she murmured as she rose up and closed the breath of space between them, he pulled her close, pressing their bodies together.

Bane fought the urge to strip her naked and find her hot, wet center on the leaf-littered ground. 

“How about a dip in the hot springs?”

“Now?” she chuckled.

“I have a flashlight and a lantern.”

“Very prepared, and yes, that’d be nice. If I’m remembering right from the last time I was here, they’re just past those trees,” she said pointing.

She turned back to see him studying her. 

“I’m sorry, I got distracted, what did you say?”

“Were you so caught up in deciding which artificial light to lead the way?”

“No, I was distracted by something else.”

Elka looked as though she was going to say something and then averted her gaze to the plastic grocery bag that had become a treasure chest of sorts. She cleared her throat, “a soak would be nice.”

“You said that already,” he murmured and pulled her close, inhaling sharply against the side of her neck, pulling her scent deep into his lungs. 

“Put your arms around me,” he demanded and squeezed her until her breath left her as Elka lifted her arms to settle around his waist. 

Elka let him confine her in his embrace, she could feel the suffocating sensation at the perimeter of her nerves. He felt her stiffen slightly and released her before she had to ask.

“I’ll get the light,” he murmured and kissed the top of her head. 

Elka watched him walk to the truck and rummage through a metal toolbox with rusted rivets. She lit another cigarette, eager for the distracting burn of the toxic smoke. 

He returned with a battered, heavy flashlight and dull maroon-colored lantern; his mask affixed back in place. 

“This way?” he asked and gestured to the particular patch of trees she had pointed out earlier.

“I thought you weren’t paying attention,” she asked with a smirk.

“We can skip the soak and I can give you all of my attention right now if you’d like,” he said with a vicious leer.

He felt an undisciplined and youthful male reaction when she rolled her eyes as she shook her head. 

He stopped walking and shined the beam of the flashlight on the lower part of her face and neck, just enough that she had to squint. “I think I’d like to give you all of my attention now,” he said with a dark melodic whisper.

“What is this?” she asked and grew frustrated under the circle of light he was raising until he nearly blinded her with the light.

“Get out of my face with that bullshit,” Elka spit as she raised her hand and swiped at the bright beam of light that illuminated the whites of her widened unblinking eyes.

Bane watched her left-hand grab at the empty air as she moved it through the blinding beam. He felt a tightening in his groin at seeing her left finger bare. He chose to not think about her being very legally married and a missing person with a fat reward on her beautiful head. 

He felt a surge of anger at her words.

“What did you say?” he asked on a musical low tone that held no signs of life. 

He lowered the beam enough that she was back to blinking rapidly and squinting until she repeated herself with just as much anger that was building within him. 

“I said, get out of my fucking face with that,” she said and held up her bare-fingered left hand as he shined the beam directly in her eyes as he stalked towards her. She caught his   
sudden movement and stumbled backwards until she nearly fell. 

Elka kept her footing as he advanced upon her and yanked off his mask, she heard the metallic pop of a clasp as he caught her eyes. “This face?”

Bane took another large step towards her, not much space remained them as he repeated his question on a musical growl.

“This face?”

“You know?” she started as she wiped her sweating hands on the sides of her pants. “This is all unnecessary, this fucking male side show,” she huffed and stood up straighter as   
Bane remained still and silent as she added. 

“I get it, you’re stronger than me, do you actually think I could feel differently?” she scoffed as she began to walk stiffly towards where she was nearly certain the bubbling hot springs were. 

“Apologize, apologize at once for your juvenile actions,” said the maternal voice in Bane’s head. 

Bane shook his head at his stupidity, he took off in a brisk pace after her. She had slowed somewhat when the terrain became difficult to navigate and she realized she hadn’t brought the lantern. 

“I’m sorry,” he said when he caught up to her and offered her the flashlight. She pointed ahead of them, “please just shine the light there.” 

He caught her upper arm and yanked her to a sudden stop. “You’re absolutely right, that was completely unnecessary, I regret that.”

Elka nodded at his words, spoken in a tone she was fairly certain he had never uttered to anyone. “It’s a stressful situation,” she tried to say casually. “It’s not much further,” she added airily and shrugged out of his grasp. “Please let it be close,” she silently begged.

Bane gave her some breathing room as they walked together, she nearly gave a victory cry when seven minutes of silent walking led to large boulders, inky black in the moonlight and the intoxicating sight of inviting hot pools of nearly still water. 

She was so relieved at the thought of scrubbing her skin clean until it tingled. Bane looked over as her expression turned grim and a split-second later, she was committing the sin of rolling her eyes at herself.

“Care to share?” he asked when she shook her head and focused on pulling off her socks. 

“It’s silly, considering.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m feeling embarrassed at taking off my clothes but that’s not very logical,” she said as she remained clothed, adding with a blush he couldn’t see in the dark. “Considering.”

“I’ll turn around then,” he said and waited to smile until his back was to her.

He heard her clothes land with a soft thump on the leaf-strewn path and heard her splash into their private, near-scalding spacious bath for two.  
Bane turned and watched as she dunked herself into the hot water. He stripped off his clothes as she grabbed handfuls of sand from beneath her feet and rubbed her arms and shoulders vigorously.

“Do be sure to not scrape your skin off,” he said as he slipped into the water.

“Do you know how much it costs to have an organic sand scrub at the spa?”

“I do not,” he said as she scraped grit out from underneath her fingernails.

“Well, it’s a lot,” she said and resumed scooping up sand. 

“When you visit here, is it with your husband?”

“No, a couple girls from work, lots of junk food and margarita camping weekends.”

He watched her smile as she reflected fondly on those weekends with women she would never see again.

A single pine needle had migrated to rest on her forehead. “Come here a minute,” he said and watched her debate his intentions. “I just want to get the leaves out of your hair.”

She moved through the water towards him, keeping herself submerged up to her shoulders. The searing water swirled around her and she held her breath as he plucked the solitary pine needle from her skin. 

“Turn around,” he said softly, “there’s more.”

Elka turned, the water churning with her movement. She closed her eyes and focused on the water’s heat that was permeating her body to the core as his fingers moved nimbly through her wet hair. Pausing to pluck several leaves and a crooked twig from the strands, his fingertips brushing against her scalp. 

Bane trailed his hands to rest on her shoulders after he had gotten every bit of foliage debris. “Are you feeling better?”

“I’m fine,” she said miserably unconvincingly.

“Talk to me,” he urged as he squeezed her shoulders. 

“Just put this moment on pause, the sky and the water, it’s all so beautiful,” she sighed and splashed water over her face and pushed her wet hair back. “We’re staying here tomorrow also?” she asked as she treaded water backwards away from him and relaxed against one of the smooth boulders. 

“Yes,” he confirmed as he copied her movement and leaned back against the slick surface of the smooth stone. 

He watched her nod and close her eyes, her shoulders visibly relaxed against the wet rock. Bane watched drops of water compete in racing down her neck, pooling in the hollow made by her collarbones before sliding into the water. 

“There’s a couple errands we’ll be attending to tomorrow,” Bane said, watching her face carefully as his words marinated in her brain. 

“Will it be safe?”

“Completely,” he said with assurance in his voice. 

“Where are we going?”

She opened her eyes when he didn’t answer and found his gaze searching her. “Where do you need to go?”

“Just a supply run,” he said casually and closed the distance between them with a couple long strides.

“Do you need anything?” he asked as he put a hand on either side of the wet boulder she was leaning against, effectively trapping her in the luxurious heat of the water.

“Any kind of soap would be great,” Elka said and tried to meet his gaze.

“Make a list of whatever you need.”

She nodded as he dropped his head towards her and whispered in her ear. “Are you ready to head back?”

Elka held up her hands and looked at her fingertips which now resembled fleshy prunes. “For now, I’m definitely repeating this tomorrow.”

“And with proper soap also,” he said and reached into the water and grabbed her hand. “Let’s get back before we freeze,” he said when the frigid night air swallowed them up. Elka nodded as the teeth-chattering cold leached away all the warmth the water had given. They both quickly got dressed and moved as swiftly as they dared in the dark with just the flashlight’s beam and moonlight. 

“Help me get the fire going again,” Bane said as the cold settled around him. She was too cold to form words and together they gathered flammable foliage and soon were able to   
thaw around the edges. 

Bane fetched the sleeping bag and wrapped most of it around her shoulders and settled next to her, she welcomed his close proximity and satellite warmth pressing against her side. 

“There’s something else I’d like to do tomorrow.”

“What’s that,” she said, rubbing her hands close to the flames.

“I’d like to take you somewhere for a first, date.” He managed to not fumble that word, never having any relationships long enough to measure. 

Elka chuckled, “that hardly matters anymore,” she said wryly. 

“How do you mean?” 

“It’s not like you will be kept from whatever you want, I’m working very hard on accepting that.”

“I want more than the physical from you, I want what I cannot take by force.”

“What could you possibly want that you can’t take?”

“I want you to give me your heart,” he whispered as he slid his hand down her side and cupped his hand on the curve of her hip, urging her closer.

“It’s mine to give,” she thought to herself.

“Don’t say anything right away,” he whispered against the top of her head, emphasizing his words with a series of gentle squeezes. 

Bane felt her shift to root through the bag she had dragged over to her feet. He was content to rest against her and didn’t notice that she picked up the tranquilizer-spiked bottle. 

He felt his heart jump up into his throat when she sagged against him. She would’ve fallen forward if not for being locked in his powerful arms. 

He looked down when the water bottle slipped from her limp fingers and thudded at their feet. “Shit,” he muttered and shifted her unconscious form until he could carry her bridal style through the tent flaps. Bane laid her gently on the ground and went back to fetch the sleeping bag. He took his time maneuvering her under the thermal layers, his hands   
lingering on her. 

Bane stared down as Elka lightly snored and wouldn’t be stirring for a good chunk of time. He let the tent flaps fall closed and walked to the truck with his flashlight to lead the way. He rooted under the driver’s seat until his hand closed around the handle of a sawed-off shotgun. He checked that it was loaded and carried it back to the campsite.   
He resumed his spot on the wood bench and stretched his arms overhead, his stiff shoulders popping. Bane couldn’t help but stare at the tent, he shook his head, “you don’t stand a chance.”

He doused the fire until the pungent smoke burned his nose, he hesitated outside the tent, “don’t fuck this up.”

Bane unzipped the sleeping bag and found she had turned over at some point, he stared at her back a moment before sliding in between the fabric next to her. He traced a hand down the outside of her left arm and ran his fingertips over the bare skin that was now devoid of a wedding band. “I wish you were awake,” he whispered to her unconscious form. “There’s a lot I want to know,” he murmured and closed his eyes and listened to the even and steadiness of her deep breathing.

Time passed, and Bane slept in little bursts of time, he was instantly in the moment when he felt her stir in his arms. Elka closed her eyes as her physical senses came to life, she felt his breath along her neck as she rose to consciousness. She was still waking up and didn’t register that he had pulled off his shirt until she felt his bare, warm skin pressing against her back. 

Bane could feel the slightest tremor of tension and worry rolling off of Elka in waves as he closed her in his powerful embrace. 

“Did you sleep well?” he as he trailed a hand under her shirt and across her smooth belly. Elka’s breath quickened when he dipped under the waistband of her pants to settle on the apex at the top of her thighs. 

Elka suppressed a shiver at his light touch before answering, “let me turn over,” she said breathlessly. 

She felt him lessen his grip and allow her to turn around and face him. 

Bane struggled to get his breathing under control and looked down at her as her gaze ran over his bare chest. He watched as her eyes danced across his skin, finding every scar and felt his breath tight in his chest when her fingertips lightly played across each ridge of scar tissue. 

“How did you get this?” Elka asked as she traced her fingers above his heart. Bane looked down at where she was touching, he watched her fingertips move on his abdomen before he answered. 

“A parting gift from a disgruntled drug czar.”

“Are we in danger?”

The fear on her face, dampened his desire. He felt her hands close around his wrists, preventing him from further teasing the skin under her waistband. 

“I did start a fire but there are no limits to what I will do to keep you safe.”

“We’re safe here another night?” 

Bane felt Elka’s grip remain solidly strong and he released her sweatpants. 

“Yes,” he said and shifted to his side, propped up on an elbow as he looked down at her face. “You are the most exquisite living being I have ever seen.”

Bane trailed his fingertips across her cheekbones as color filled her face.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Not exactly, more confused than anything else.”

“Can I clarify anything?”

“Is this what my life is now?”

“Well not in a tent but with me, yes.”

Bane traced his fingertips down her neck and along her collar bones as he added gently, “live with me, marry me and share your life with me.”

Elka’s mouth went dry, “marry?”

“Yes of course,” he said and grasped her bare left hand. “I want to know that you are mine, that you’re choosing me.” He squeezed her hand and quickly added, “I will not rush you to the altar.”

Her mind churned ferociously, “where will we live?” she stammered.

“Near one of the Great Lakes.”

“A house, marriage, a life,” she said hollowly, “will I be working? What if I don’t like something about the house? What if I want a dog?”

Bane interrupted her growing frantic questioning, “you can change whatever you’d like about the house and property, pick out whatever you’d like to wear, drive and eat. Get a dozen puppies and work or don’t. We can get horses; doesn’t every beautiful princess have a pony?”

“I don’t understand the upheaval of your life because of me,” she said incredulously. “What do you see when you look at me.”

“Don’t you understand, you are life, I was empty and slowly disappearing until I saw you for the first time. You brought me back to life.”

Elka leaned against him and rested her ear over his heart, “what if I don’t share those same feelings.”

“I’m hopeful those feelings will come in time, I will do anything to earn your love, will you let me earn it?”

Elka listened as his heartbeat increased in the span of silence before she spoke. “Yes.”

“Thank you,” Bane whispered against the crown of her head. “Thank you,” he said with more urgency and pulled her as close as he could, as though he was going to consume her.

Lust surged through his nervous system and electricity filled the routes of his neural pathways as he tightened his arms around her. 

Elka felt his touch become urgent and grew breathless as he slid his hands lower to smooth under her thighs and tugged her closer. 

Bane felt her body involuntarily stiffen and an exhausted moan escaped from between her lips when he pulled on her too aggressively.

His body wanted to negotiate a way into her body, but he saw the fatigue present in her face. He was able to grit his teeth and ignore his wants and nod. “I’ve got to check the   
truck, why don’t you relax, go enjoy a soak.”

Elka exhaled deeply and sagged against him. “Thank you,” she murmured and eventually motivated herself for a soak. She returned to the campsite and laid a towel on the carved bench. She pulled a hat over her eyes and laid back under the morning sun as Bane milled about the site and at the front of the truck.

The hours passed, and her brain didn’t know if it was coming or going when she found that a good chunk of time had passed where she’d ended up falling asleep. Elka sat up and watched Bane check the engine of the truck. She joined him by the heavy paneled Chevy as he checked the oil level, he glanced over at her as he replaced the dipstick.  
Bane looked at her, trying for a neutral expression, “doing okay?”

She nodded and watched him let the hood fall closed and move to each tire to check the air pressure.

Elka leaned against the sturdy body of the truck and glanced through the dirty window into the small space behind the bench seat. She narrowed her eyes on a silver briefcase, partially tucked under the seat. 

Elka watched Bane check the spare tire’s integrity and started to follow him back to the campsite. “I’m going to see if there are any granola bars in the truck,” she said to his back.  
Bane sounded an acknowledgement and continued back towards the tent.

Elka waited until he was steps away from the canvas flaps before pulling the truck door open. She found herself holding her breath as she tugged the aluminum case from the back of the truck and lifted it onto the bench seat. She brushed her thumb across the metal latch and lifted the lid with a touch of hesitation hobbling her progress. 

Elka blew out a slow breath as the case flipped open and she traced her fingertips along the inside edges of the case. 

Her eyes darted around in her orbital sockets as she focused on the first sheet of paper on top of a messy stack of yellowed and curled edged newspaper articles. 

She ran her eyes over the paper that was signed by a high-ranking government official, skimming just a few of the key words. 

“Bosnia…Operation Draconian….Libya….regime…termination.”

Elka set the paper to the side of the metal tomb and couldn’t hide the expressions that flooded across her features when her eyes set upon a morbid collection of eight by ten   
photographs.

“Is this my fate someday?” she asked herself in a dry tone as she held up a grainy black and white photo.

The glossy photo showed a crowd of bodies that had been grossly violated and gratuitously dismembered. Their crudely machete removed extremities had been fashioned into a peace sign.

“How many of these people did he kill?” she said as she thumbed through the other photos that showed people of every kind of dead or dying caught in the glossy black and white images.

She frowned and tried to understand the number of reported acceptable losses for a certain South African job that it seemed Bane had been hired to perform. “What justifies that?” she asked and finally replaced the papers and closed the case. She pushed it aside. “How many of those people did he kill?” she repeated and bit back a shout as his voice rang out   
behind her.

Bane walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, he pressed the front of his mask to the crown of her head and looked past her at the briefcase contents. 

“How many of those deaths were by your own hands?”

He remained silent and squeezed her closer to him, “how many?”

“More than half,” he said in a low tone as she couldn’t believe the number if her math was right.

“Are you that person?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you that person now?”

“I’ll always be that person, but you have given me the strength to be more.”

“Tell me who you are,” she murmured.

“I’m the one who will keep you safe, I’ll give you everything you need and want. A home.”

“I’m not going to end up as a keepsake photo someday?”

“Never,” he said fiercely and roughly spun her in his arms. His eyes bored into hers, “never,” he emphasized as he squeezed her upper arms. 

They held eye contact, her remaining stiff in his formable embrace. “I’d like to go sit down, make some more of that packaged dirt you call coffee.”

Bane listened to her forced joviality and half-smiled at her under his mask, “make enough for me also.”

Elka slipped away as soon as he loosened his arms and tried to casually walk back to the dented kettle she had filled earlier. Bane watched her and gathered up the photos and photocopied papers together as she stirred the bitter coffee granules into the water. He closed the briefcase and shoved it back under the bench seat before following the same path she walked back to the campsite. 

He settled on the log bench across from her, she had two mismatched cups sitting upright next to her on the bench and was staring intently at a fat, spotted ladybug casually sitting in the center of a happy-looking dandelion. He could nearly her thoughts churning inside her skull. 

“Are you thinking about the pictures you found in the case?” Bane asked quietly.

Elka nodded wordlessly, her eyes remaining glued to the glossy-winged insect. 

“I’m sorry you had to see those, what you saw was a means of employment, survival.”

She snorted and looked up at him, “employment huh?” she asked wryly. “There’s quite the vast job market out there.”

“I have specialized skills that fall outside the bounds of traditional employment.”

“Were you taught these skills or born that way, are you a special case of nature versus nurture?”

Bane misread her tone as sarcastic, judgmental, entirely the opposite of the fear and nervousness that poured into her voice. 

“Well excuse me Mrs. Green, how many steps are there to the top of your Ivory tower? Do you ring a little silver bell and your coffee arrives under a domed cloche with a silk napkin?” 

“Fuck you,” she hissed as she jumped to her feet. “You don’t know anything about me except for whatever information your little hacker pal found about me on the internet.”

“I know you’re from a different class than the rest of us, married well didn’t you Elka? Accidental gala interlude when you saw the Good Justice’s designer watch and car?”

Bane rose to his feet as she flushed with anger, he watched her hands clench into fists, she was a sudden furious volcano, ready to spew her pyroclastic rage.

“You don’t know anything,” she seethed, speaking in an eerie calmness as she added. “I got an obscene settlement when a good number of my immediate family was killed in a plane crash and I invested fucking wisely because my only surviving uncle was a burgeoning hedge fund manager.”

Bane felt the bottom drop out of his body, “shit. You fucking idiot, you go grovel at her goddamn feet.”

Before Bane could take his next breath, he watched in what seemed slow-motion as she picked up the nearly bubbling kettle in an effort to distract herself. Elka’s reptilian brain was in the driver’s seat and she didn’t think that near-boiling water equated to a minimum second-degree burn. She screamed when the skin of her palm nearly melted to the kettle’s handle. 

She wanted to kick something and instead took off running for the cold river with the pain of her burning flesh making her want to cry. 

“Stop,” he called after her weakly and then realized the cold water would be best and took off after her at a fast trot. 

By the time Bane reached her side, she had her hand plunged in the moving water. 

He settled on a stack of boulders and waited until her flush receded before speaking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know any of that.”

“No. You didn’t,” she said with mental and physical pain staining her voice. “You wouldn’t unless your hacker was very good, that all happened before I was eighteen and I don’t discuss it freely.”

He stood and started the take a few steps towards her when she held up her unburned hand. “No, please, go sit down.” 

Bane fought himself to not continue his forward momentum, he paused and took two giant steps back to the boulders he had just been occupying. 

He watched her wince as the water rushed over the skin of her burned palm, he cleared his throat. “How is that looking?”

Elka frowned at her submerged hand, “I don’t know, I haven’t looked at it yet.”

“This is the moment you officially sever yourself from the organization, there will now be a bounty on your head,” he thought right before he spoke. 

“Keep your hand in the water, I’m going to pack up.”

“Why, where are we going?”

“I’m going to make sure I get you better care for your hand, a proper bath and a bed to sleep in tonight. It’s the least I can do at this point, considering,” he trailed off.

“Thank you,” she whispered with genuine gratitude.

He nodded and started to walk away, he turned when she called his name.

“Bane, thank you, really.”

“You’re welcome, truly,” he said before returning to pack up the minimal site. 

Elka heard the truck’s large engine turn over and lifted her hand from the water, she bit back a gasp as her eyes fell on her palm that was stretched into a giant discolored blister, clear fluid swimming underneath the taut skin. Her palm was the vibrant color of a fuchsia crayon. 

She blew out a sharp breath and began to walk towards the idling truck. Bane saw her approaching; he got out of the driver’s side and opened the passenger door for her.

“How bad?” he asked as he gestured to her hand.

Elka extended her arm towards him.

He nodded wordlessly, observing her scorched palm, “I’ll ensure you have something for that when we get settled.”

Elka nodded, “where are we going?” she asked as she shifted on the seat.

“North east,” he said with a straight face.

Bane was glad she managed an almost smile. “About how much time on the road?” 

He looked at his watch, “a couple hours.”

“That’s great,” she said with relief as he closed her door and got back behind the wheel.

Every mile that ticked on the odometer was closer to the possibility of a nail in his coffin, a bullet to the brain and complete cardiac death.

As Elka stared out the window, her hand throbbing, back in the penthouse, Justice Calvin Green answered his phone on the third ring. The caller ID said blocked and a frown quickly deepened the creases on his forehead. It was the lead detective investigating Elka’s abduction. Calvin held his breath, managing to suppress a groan of relief as detective Chase informed him there was nothing to update on his missing wife. Calvin nodded and adjusted his cufflinks as the detective told him they were expanding the search area after a possible sighting and would call with any further updates.

As Calvin watched himself on tv, his white teeth sparkling in the replay of an earlier conservative interview, travelling in the fast lane, Bane looked over at Elka where she stared out the window.

“Doing okay?” he asked as he signaled the truck until he was in the slow lane, just under a quarter mile from the exit.

“Yes,” she mumbled and shifted on the seat. 

“We’ll be there soon, and you can properly rest.”


	10. The Woman Made of Money

As Elka stared down at her burnt hand which throbbed in time with her heartbeat, back in the maze of the Gotham City sewers, Esau scoured street footage in search of Bane fleeing with the financial ice queen. It would end up taking him hours to zoom in on the plates and expand his search. As he started the search process, back in the missing, moving truck, Elka stifled a yawn with her good hand before she spoke. 

“That’s good,” she said tiredly, “will you be stopping at the store first? I need some kind of antibiotic cream and gauze.”

“There’s a shopping center coming up, but first I’m going to need you to understand a few things before you get out of this truck.”

“And what is it that I need to grasp?” She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice but her aching palm enhanced her every sense. 

Bane ignored her tone as he spoke. “I’m going to allow you out of the truck without your word that you will not draw attention to yourself or run. No unnecessary conversation with anyone unless it is to only match courtesy.”

“Anything else?” Elka asked shaking her head and held up her unburned hand before he could reply. “I’m not going to do anything.”

Neither of them exchanged further words as he continued at a good traffic-free pace to the parking lot of the big-box retailer. 

“Are you ready?” he asked as he put the truck in park and pulled a blue hat with a professional football team’s logo from behind the seat and handed it to her. “Put this on.”

He watched her tuck her hair under the cap as he continued. “I’m not going to be able to accompany you,” he murmured and passed her a battered watch. “You have ten minutes, I don’t want to threaten you, but I need to understand that you’re going to be back in nine.”

Elka nodded and pushed open the heavy passenger side door. She slipped the money he handed her in his pocket, as he watched her walk away, she counted out the bills to find forty-four dollars. 

The store was too bright from the combination of the white paint on every wall and fluorescent lighting overhead. She maneuvered the blue plastic cart through the wide aisles and got what she perceived, as necessary. 

The check stand was devoid of people and Elka was glad to get back to the truck, her fatigue was overwhelming, and the vivid lighting and gaudy colors of the stuffed shelves had made her nauseous.

Bane let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding when she reappeared through the automatic doors. He pushed open the door and let the seat fall forward so she could put the bags on the floorboard. He watched her sort through the bags and set aside a soda, bottle of water, tube of burn ointment and roll of cotton gauze.  


“It’s not much further,” he said in an assuring tone once they were settled with the large engine idling. The heater was old and took a few minutes for her to feel her chills lift. Before he left the parking lot, he plucked the gauze from her shaky unburned hand and applied a thick layer of translucent ointment before loosely wrapping her hand in the post-surgical wrap. 

“Not much further,” he repeated as Elka nodded wordlessly and drank deeply from the cold water.

The hotel was sprawling and painted in warm tones and boasted a South Western theme. “I’m going to park in the garage,” he said and turned into the five-story structure adding. “I need you to stay here while I get the room key, there’s a lot of potential witnesses in there.”

“But I went to that store,” she rebutted.

“No one pays attention in those stores, but I need your attention now.”

“You have it,” she said and turned her eyes towards him. 

“You need to tell me that you’re going to stay put until I return.”

“I promise,” she said in a singsong voice. 

“Elka I need you to be serious.”

“I am, I’ll be right here when you get back,” she said and patted the seat with her good hand. 

Bane nodded satisfactorily and she watched in rapt fascination as he efficiently unloaded a syringe into the large muscle of his thigh and slipped his mask free. He looked over at she stared at his transformation as he slipped into a button-down silk shirt and pulled a coordinating tie into a neat double-Windsor knot. “I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention,” he said as her expression showed how much she was enjoying the makeover. 

He spared her a final glance and walked quickly to the check-in desk. He was relieved to find a hotel staffer that was expedient, and he was soon returning to the truck with a royal blue electronic key. 

He hid his relief when he saw Elka in the same spot when he returned. “Room 808,” he said as he opened her door. 

Bane loaded up the lion’s share of their baggage and they found the elevator to the fourth floor and quickly walked across the parking lot. 

Elka followed Bane up the hotel’s nondescript staircase and watched him slide the plastic room key into the card reader of room 808. He pulled down on the pewter handle when the light blinked green three times in rapid succession.

Elka blew out a hard breath which was louder than she intended. Bane turned and looked at her when her sigh sounded loudly. 

“It’s safe here,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. Elka felt the warmth from his fingertips through her clothes and forced a tight smile. 

Bane held open the door and watched her look around the spacious suite, surprised that behind the nondescript door and benign keycard was such a vast wall-to-wall carpeted vision of a room. 

“This is amazing,” she said as she dropped a paper shopping bag on a low table in the tiled entryway of the suite and walked across the carpet of the living room that was dominated by a wood burning fireplace. 

Bane hung back in the doorway as she walked into the large bedroom that had soft lighting and smooth satin bedding in deep, warm colors that celebrated the birth of autumn. She didn’t offer a verbal comment on the bedroom and instead slipped into the bathroom that boasted stacks of folded high thread count towels and matching bathmats. 

She felt her lips curve into a smile as her eyes fell upon a large woven basket that was adorned with a large gold bow and filled with bath oils, floral soaps, and other botanical bath products.

Elka was in the middle of twisting off the cap of a rose scented bottle of bubble bath when Bane’s voice echoed in the open bathroom. His soft words broke her away from deeply inhaling the delicate scent of the exotic and designer blush pink gel.

“How are you feeling?”

She shrugged before replying and glanced again at her watch. “I think it’s about time for something stronger to drink than coffee.”

He smiled at her continued forced enthusiasm and watched her twist the bottle closed and replace it gingerly with the other tubes of floral lotion and smoothing body creams. Elka slowly walked towards him and he casually stepped over to block her path. She gave a half-hearted attempt to push past him, not thinking that being so close to him would mean being wrapped up in the intoxicating aroma of his warm skin.

“Can I get past?”

“No.”

“Please?”

He leaned closer to her; his breath hot along the line of her jaw as she turned her face away from him.

“No.”

Bane prevented any forward progress and she avoided his eyes while memorizing the feel of his shirt under her fingertips. She opened her mouth to speak and then imagined what she would sound like, she feared the naked vulnerability.

There was no way past him. “What then?”

“Did you notice that bed’s a lot roomier than the sleeping bag?”

“I hadn’t really noticed that,” she lied and shifted nervously in front of his looming frame. 

“Take your time cleaning up, take a long bath and then come to bed.”

“You don’t just have sleeping on your mind right now do you?”

“You know, you never did tell me how many times you and your…. husband shared, the martial bed.”

Elka ran her unscathed hand through her hair and couldn’t keep the startled expression from filling her face. “I didn’t keep a tally,” she said as she shook her head and sat heavily on the edge of the bathtub, finding she couldn’t breathe standing so close to him. 

“An average then, about how many times a week Elka?”

“I don’t know, not a lot.”

“I’m trying to be patient Elka, how often?”

“We didn’t okay, didn’t past a few times okay, we had an arrangement.”

Bane couldn’t keep his own surprised expression under wraps at her words and didn’t have to wait long for her to elaborate. She tried to appear casual as she attempted to explain her marriage.

“I did get pregnant when Cal and I had a bit too much to drink at that stupid gala. He was running for his first seat on the bench after the previous conservative judge had passed from a sudden heart attack. An unwanted pregnancy or bastard child wouldn’t do it for Cal, and he thinks abortion is the absolutely worst thing imaginable. We don’t really like each other much but,” Elka trailed off as Bane’s gaze seemed to see inside to the very chambers of her rapidly beating heart. 

“But what Elka?” he murmured from the doorway, fighting the urge to cross to her, kneel in front of her and promise a better arrangement, something real. 

“We don’t see eye to eye on much, but we got married for the sake of optics. It was a lovely wedding, but I miscarried ten days after we moved into the penthouse.”

She snorted back a laugh and shook her head. “I was writing out the thank-you cards for the wedding gifts and was in the intensive care unit six hours later, lost the baby and the ability to ever conceive again.”

“I’m sorry Elka,” he finally whispered.

“Don’t be,” she said quickly. “It was really for the best, after that, Calvin and I just agreed to carry on socially as husband and wife but essentially live our own lives, being discreet when it comes to matters that could potentially cause embarrassment.”

“He’s discreet with his lovers?”

Elka shrugged, “as much as he can be, I guess, he hasn’t been rocked by any scandals.”

“How about you?”

“What?”

“Do you have any discreet lovers?”

Elka chuckled, “no, nothing like that.”

“You don’t long for someone? A partner, companion?”

Bane sharpened his gaze as his words fell on her ears. She blushed under the sharp intensity from his eyes. 

“I guess, I just, never met that kind of person,” she said slowly and looked down at her feet.

“It’s a delicious feeling when you do meet that person,” he whispered and walked slowly towards her and knelt at her feet. Bane listened to the hitch in her breathing when he placed a hand on either side of the tub’s ledge, trapping her in place. 

Her pulse quickened at his close proximity and she was unable to keep from raising her unburned hand to press against his chest. 

At her touch, Bane’s head turned into a raging, frothing sea of emotions, he managed to keep it reined in and dropped a hand to close around her wrist. Elka bit back a gasp as he pressed his lips to her smooth palm, his voice was a warm, tickling on her skin. “May I be that person for you Elka? The one to keep you safe and fulfill your….needs?”

“That’s a lot to absorb,” she forced herself to say without a scoff as his hands landed on her hips and squeezed urgently.

“Do I repulse you that much?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“What is it then?” he asked as he grasped her hand and kissed her knuckles gently. She held her breath as he didn’t release her, instead he moved her hand down the front of his body, landing on his growing rigidity. 

“Don’t I make you feel safe? Don’t I make your body feel good?” 

“He does make you feel safe,” she thought to herself. Elka’s mind was activity churning and urgently added, “he will keep you safe and you might grow to crave his touch, but above else you’ll be alive.”

“Yes,” she whispered raggedly, resignation making her limbs feel cement laden. 

Bane leaned back and looked at her, she tried to make her tone light despite her inner feelings, fears, and emotions. “Yes?” he parroted.

“Yes.”

“Take some time to clean-up, we can talk more later. Would you like dinner from room service too?”

“Yes, please,” she said with embarrassing enthusiasm, “spaghetti and meatballs or any kind of pasta.”

Bane traced his fingertips along her culinary inspired smile, “it’ll be waiting for you,” he whispered and kissed her forehead leaving her to fill the tub and adorn the hot, flowing water with botanical bath foams and oils. 

He ordered the food as she soaked in the perfumed water, adding a rare ribeye and baked potato for himself. He longed to join her; a jolt shot to his core every time he heard the water splash along her wet, naked skin.

Bane forced himself to sit on the edge of the firm king mattress and wait in excruciating physical want and need until he simultaneously heard the water begin to drain from the tub and the quick knock on the door with their piping hot room service dinner.

Elka came out of the bathroom to find a plate of spaghetti covered with a thick red sauce and plump meatballs waiting for her. They ate in a comfortable silence; she was surprised at how hungry she was and was soon dragging her bread across the sauce-covered plate to soak up the olive oil and garlic remnants. 

Bane smiled at her dinner appreciation and sliced his steak into thick ribbons that leeched blood into his neat pile of seasonal vegetables. He picked up the remote control and aimed it at the flat screen television, the channel was preset to the news and they were both met with the tail end of Chief Justice Calvin Green’s plea for the return of his beloved missing wife.

“Can you please turn that off or change the channel?”

Bane wisely didn’t tease or offer a verbal comment, he clicked the arrow up button and soon the screen was filled with a popular cop movie and its infamous car chase scene in full high definition. 

Bane watched her suppress a yawn with the back of her bandaged hand. 

“Come lay down.”

Elka put her plate aside and brushed breadcrumbs off her lap. She felt her nerves idiotically embarrassing her.

He came around the side of the bed and pulled back the linen, “let me make you feel good.”

Elka kicked off her shoes and slipped under the covers. Bane felt himself grow hard enough to be uncomfortable behind his zipper as she rolled onto her side, facing away from him. 

He slid across the mattress until he could smooth his hand down her outer arm and slip to settle on her waist. 

He squeezed her side and nuzzled his face in the back of her neck, inhaling deeply and catching a light floral scent from the hotel’s shampoo. 

Bane pressed his lips against her head and their collective respiratory rate increased as his fingertips reached the top of her panties. He dipped his fingertips lower and brushed against the thin layer of fabric that covered her femininity.

Elka squeezed her eyes shut as she felt a slow-building blush as he slid his hand down the front of the thin fabric of her panties to cup a hand against her warm intimacy. Elka gasped at the sudden feel of his intimate touch. An involuntarily moan escaped her lips as Bane started to probe her delicate folds with his fingertips.

“Turn over,” he demanded huskily and watched conflicting thoughts wash across her face as he traced his fingertips along her, one fingertip came to rest against her clit and began to tease the nerve cluster. Her blush flared to life as she felt a rush of wetness under his touch, but she couldn’t seem to drop her gaze. He increased his gentle rhythm on her nerve center until he felt it start to harden under his caress.

Bane never stopped touching her as he shifted and insinuated himself further between her thighs as he rested more of his lower body against hers.

Elka felt her body betray her as her pelvis lifted into his touch, Bane dropped his head and buried his face against her neck. He could hear her breath increasing as she tried to keep from squeezing her thighs tightly around his waist. 

As she tried to shake her head and not focus on the growing heaviness that had started in her lower belly and only bloomed further under his attention, he dropped his free hand to his zipper and freed his hardening cock.

Elka didn’t fight him as he pulled her sweatpants down the sides of her thighs. She found a strangled gasp tear its way from her throat as he curled his fingertips around the top of her panties and pulled the fabric free from her body. 

He let his fingertips dance from her hips to the inside of her thighs and push them further apart. Bane growled with feral delight as her femininity was exposed to his gaze and he lowered his mouth to the apex at the top of her thighs. 

Elka found herself only able to speak in low moans as she felt Bane’s mouth and tongue tickle and explore her wet and delicate folds. He found himself relishing in the sounds he was able to manifest from his varying touches and caresses. 

Elka’s thighs began to shake as she neared release and Bane finally had to give into his body’s growing and unrelenting need. He rose up and kept the majority of his weight on his elbows as he let his engorged and painfully erect cock tease at her wet opening. 

Elka looked down and felt a rush of wetness when her eyes found his stiffness. She looked back up and met his eyes as she let him push her thighs further apart and allowed him to rub his rigid length flush against her body. 

Bane’s cock grew hard until it ached against the inside of her thigh as he ran a fingertip across her slick folds and the cluster of nerves that hardened under his touch and forced a low cry from her.

“Tell me you want me,” Bane rasped in a thickened voice 

His voice found her as he increased the rhythm of his fingertip on her swollen, sensitive clit. “Tell me.”

Elka gave the barest of nods as he traced the rough pads of his fingertips down the side of her face. “I want you,” she gasped breathlessly as he dropped his head and caught one of her hardening nipples in his mouth. 

She was only capable of gasping and giving a low moan when he eased his entire length inside of her. Elka felt the sudden fullness as her body struggled to accommodate him, she felt his strength and power as he shifted and started to move in a slow and even rhythm supporting most of his weight on his elbows.

He continued moving at a gentle rhythm, his body aching for release. Each time he sheathed himself into her his body begged for him to climax. While Bane willed his control to hold fast, he resumed the slow circles against her sensitive nub of flesh.

Elka felt near overwhelmed at the feel of his body sliding in and out of her and the feelings he was creating with his touch. She felt herself tumble into a chasm of electric bliss as her climax took over her body and soon Bane fell into the well of ecstasy after her.

She felt his body slowly lose its rigidity and he withdrew. 

“Are you okay?” Bane asked in a strained voice, still riding out the post-coital wave of pleasure. Elka nodded, her ability to articulate words momentarily hobbled as the remnants of her orgasmic explosion electrically jumped in her lower belly and shot throughout her limbs.

“So,” Bane said softly, kissing the tip of her nose, “where would you like to go for our first date?”

Elka’s lips broke into a genuine smile as he added. “It can’t be in public or anywhere but this room for now.”

Bane rejoiced inside at her small laugh and flash of sparkle in her eyes, “then, right here I guess,” she said patting the top of the mattress. 

Elka felt a sudden rise in her embarrassment when he brushed his fingertips through her hair. She felt a tremble when his rough fingers started at her scalp and slid to the ends of her silken strands as he dropped his head and whispered above her lips. “We can still enjoy the evening here, another dinner from room service.” 

She watched the muscle next to his eye twitch before he blew out a heavy breath and reached for his mask he had left within arm’s reach. Elka watched him affix his mask back in place before what she could see of his expression turned solemn, “there’s something sensitive I need to ask you.”

Elka surprised him with a scoff, “what could I possibly be shocked at by anymore?”

“I need all of your attention right now,” he said with no inflection to his voice, the lack of tone killed her laughter. 

“You have it.”

“If what you said about your husband and marriage are true, why assign a number for dating? Why five?”

Elka shrugged, “it sounded like a good number. Not too prudish or slutty.”

He laughed genuinely, “what about finding the pictures and stating that he was cheating?” he asked, squeezing her tighter. “You could’ve told me the truth in the first place.”

Elka shrugged, “it’s a habit I guess, I wrote and memorized the script.”

“Did you alter the truth on anything else you said?”

“I sense you have something specific in mind,” she whispered and shifted against him, feeling his softening cock pressed to the inside of her thigh. 

“Did you withhold the truth about taking a lover?”

“I have not slept with anyone since that open bar gala.”

Bane tried to keep the relief off his face, he felt the truth in her words and in her body. “In your alternative version of the truth, you said it was five dates until intimacy.”

Elka nodded and he continued.

“How long until he earned your heart?”

“He’s never had that,” she said strongly.

“Has anyone?”

Elka ignored his question, “what about you? How many have your shared your life and love with?”

“I can’t recall a single feature of any face,” Bane said immediately. “There hasn’t been anyone who has held a shred of meaning or value.” His frontal lobe tried to paint a mural of Talia’s face behind his eyes, tried to insist that he loved the woman he nearly lost his life in Pena Dura for. “I do not love that woman,” he seethed to his mind on a wash of chilly darkness. 

“No one?” she whispered and pressed her unburned palm over his heart.

Bane wordlessly dropped his head to the curve of her neck, “could you love me?” She grew still as his whispered words filled her ear, “be only mine?”

He raised his face to scrutinize her, he could nearly see how his questions had shaken her, starkly and suddenly exposed her. Elka felt further vulnerability nearly swallow her whole, she couldn’t look away from him. Bane wanted her to speak and pressed her further with his uncomfortable questions.

“Have you Elka, have you given anyone your heart?”

Biting her lower lip, she took a small breath and shook her head. “No.”

“No?” he asked with genuine astonishment. 

“No,” she repeated on an exhale and felt a shudder pass through her under his heavy gaze.

It seemed a long time until he spoke, before he did, he slid his hand to the back of her head and cradled her skull. He wove his fingertips in her hair and pulled her as close as he could. 

“That makes me very happy to hear Elka,” he murmured against the crown of her head. The strands of her hair rubbing against the titanium mesh front of his mask. 

As she let herself get wrapped up in Bane’s embrace, back in the sewer system all hell was breaking loose. Esau had rounded up everyone when he found Bane missing along with the abducted financial whore and he had eyes moving out in every direction. 

The other highly paid men gathered around Esau as he pulled up the last known coordinates that Bane’s satellite phone had pinged.

What no one knew made the search-and-destroy mission to find Bane and Elka start in the completely wrong direction. Bane had attached his sat phone to the large wheel of a large semi heading out of the big-box retailer parking lot. Esau was currently tracking the large commercial eighteen-wheeler as it headed to the heart of the Midwest and the company’s headquarters. 

As the brightly painted truck merged onto the highway, back in the penthouse suite, Judge Calvin Green awoke with a platinum blonde tucked against his side. He frowned for a minute and rubbed his eyes as he tried to remember the blonde’s name, where he met her and how much he’d had to drink.

As Calvin yawned deeply and felt nausea settle over him, back in the spacious hotel room, Elka let her body relax under his touch and Bane’s hands which roamed along the peaks and valleys of her bare skin. 

“I want your heart,” Bane whispered against her warm skin. “I want you to give me all of your love.”

He watched emotions fill her eyes as she tried to look away. 

“Talk to me,” he demanded in the wake of her silence, trailing his fingertips along her jawline. 

Elka shook her head, “it’s just a lot to take in, it’s overwhelming.”

Bane watched her expression shift as she added, “it’s not like it even matters what I have to say though.”

“Why do you say that?”

Elka frowned at him, still so aware of his warm embrace and being pressed against his body. “Well, you already told me that I wouldn’t be returning to my previous life.”

Before Bane could speak, she quickly lifted her hand and placed her fingers against the mesh front of his mask. “I’m not saying I want to return to my life before, I’m just asking for some patience while I work through….accepting this.”

Elka left her fingertips on the front of his mask as he stared down at her wordlessly for what seemed like a long time.

He captured her hand and squeezed it urgently. “We started in fear, but I’ll do anything you need in order for you to feel comfortable with me and your new life.”

Elka felt a blush fill her face and spread down her neck and chest at the intensity of his gaze, she cleared her throat but couldn’t tear her eyes away from his.

“Anything,” Bane repeated as dropped his head to the flushed skin at the curve of her neck. 

Elka spoke while Bane’s hot exhale through the front of his mask teased along her skin. “The things you say, how can you?”

“What do you mean, how can I?” he asked lifting his head to look at her. 

She found herself stumbling over her words and unable to form a coherent sentence.

She felt her self-consciousness fill and wash over her and tried to move out of his formidable embrace. 

“No,” Bane said in a dangerous tone and pulled her impossibly close. 

He felt the panic surging throughout her limbs as she dropped her chin and desperately tried to ignore the weight of his body and his hot exhale as he put his fingers under her chin and lifted firmly. Elka squeezed her eyes shut. “Do not turn away from me,” Bane whispered raggedly, keeping her solidly locked in his arms. 

“Talk to me,” he reiterated urgently, watching distress fill her face. She shook her head slightly, refusing to open her eyes and look at him. “I just don’t know if I trust you entirely, I’m afraid of you,” she admitted in a low tone.

Bane slightly relaxed his hold on her, allowing her to take a deeper breath. He took a moment to revel in the remnants of her taste on his lips and the scent of her nearly overwhelming his ability to speak. 

“I regret the pain I’ve caused you, the fear I’ve created in here,” he murmured, brushing his fingertips along her closed eyelids, “and in here,” he added laying his palm on the warm skin above her rapidly beating heart.

“How can I take away your fear? “Gain your trust?” Bane added when she remained silent. He was relieved she had opened her eyes as she regarded him guardedly. 

Elka willed herself to relax in his strong embrace, she pushed out a slow exhale and met his eyes.

“I honestly don’t know if there’s some sort of starting place at this point, but I do know that I’d like to trust you,” she said and continued in the blush of a whisper. “I’d like to stop being afraid.”

Bane absorbed the wash of her vulnerable words as she added, “can we just stay like this for a while, talk more later?” 

“Yes,” he murmured and watched a modicum of relief bleed into her eyes. Bane shifted them both until he could pull her body back, molded to the front of his, “there’ll be plenty of time for us to talk.”


	11. Forgotten History and Rotten Smiles

As Bane and Elka enjoyed the silence, hours away, Calvin clicked on the remote until he found the high-definition Faux & Pals News Hour.

He watched as his earlier interview was replayed, this one was his favorite and he leaned forward and lip-synced his own words. In this interview he had perfected his solemn expression and the calls to the emergency line was flooded with calls as people called in sighting tips on every tall, dark blonde they saw. 

Calvin fell asleep after he consumed a third of a bottle of a barrel-aged whiskey. The news replayed itself, Breaking News, announcing itself every fifteen minutes as fresh and new with brighter and more colorful graphics.

As Calvin passed out on a numbing sea of grain alcohol, Esau and the other men were locked on the tracking signal from the phone Bane had attached to the big rig. 

The signal beeped steadily, indicating it was heading southwest on a major highway. The dangerous men loaded weaponry and slipped into tactical gear and headed for the steady flashing red light. 

Bane stretched his arms overhead and listened to his shoulders pop, “we should get going soon,” he whispered to the back of her head.

She mumbled an agreeable sound and rubbed her eyes. She sat up and pushed her hair back as Bane was already in the bathroom washing his face. “I have a different hat I would like you to wear,” he said walking out of the bathroom, drying his face and hands.

“Sure,” she said and pulled on her clothes and took the hat he handed her. She tucked her hair under the dark green hat that was decorated with a four-leaf clover. 

Bane watched her with a small smile as she shoved her hair out of sight. He quickly frowned as she gingerly dabbed a damp cloth on her palm.

“How is that looking?”

Elka held out her palm towards him, he could see the skin swollen and pulled tight, filled with liquid from the sudden and searing burn. 

He kneeled in front of her and helped her with her shoes. “Where are we headed today?” she asked as his hands lingered on her calves. 

“I’d like to get a full ten or twelve hours on the road, if we both drive it would work.”

“That sounds fine,” she said letting him help her slip into a light zippered sweatshirt.

Bane slipped his fingers into his pants pocket and pulled the keyring out, his fingertips brushed against the priceless band of metal at the bottom of his pocket. 

He squeezed the ring tight, feeling the diamonds and rubies press sharply into his palm, he remembered the first time he had held the ring up to the light. 

Bane closed his eyes and watched her as he let his mind return him to where there was sand everywhere underfoot and in every molecule of air he breathed. 

Bane had become separated from his team and ended up being cornered by two enemy mercenaries. The two rebels spoke rapidly to each other in a language that was vaguely familiar to him and he could pick out a few dangerous words in the two men’s excitable chatter. The two men had bet money to fight Bane first, the bigger man had won and snorted loudly and spit a green blob to the sand in front of him. 

The tall man swung his arms towards him, clutching a serrated switchblade, Bane slipped sideways and kicked his leg out to catch the man squarely in the center of his knee. The man screamed curses at him as his knee bent backwards and he ended up face down in the sand. Bane seized the moment and yanked the blade from the squealing insurgent and cut his throat from ear to ear. 

Bane was on his feet in the next instance as the shorter enemy advanced on him. On the rebel’s left hand’s pinky finger, he saw a brilliant ring of rubies and diamonds. 

The enemy saw Bane’s eyes fall upon the weighted treasure on his finger and gave him a smile of yellowed, rotting teeth and yanked the ring off his finger. Bane watched as the man swallowed the ring and gave him an even wider rotten smile. 

Bane dodged a punch and caught the man’s extended hand, he quickly chopped at the man’s elbow joint and heard the bones break loudly. The man screeched and then went silent within the space of a heartbeat. He never registered the curved knife slide under his chin and open up his throat. The steel blade traveled through the flesh easily and was stopped by the spinal column. 

Bane let the enemy’s warm body flop to the sand and pushed him onto his back. He ripped at the rebel’s clothes, exposing the chest and plunged his knife into the freshly dead flesh. Bane dug through the flesh and carved through muscle and viscera until he could close his large hand around the swallowed priceless antiquity. He yanked the ring free from its corpse coffin and wiped it clean of viscera before holding it up and letting it be kissed by the rays of the hot sun. 

Bane was shaken from his trip down memory lane by Elka’s voice, he realized she had been speaking to him. “Are you okay?” she repeated for the fourth time. 

“Yes,” he said, feeling emotions fill his heart until his chest ached. “Just fine,” he reiterated with a small smile. 

“Are you ready to go?” she asked as she zipped up her sweatshirt.

“Quite ready,” he said and followed her from the room.

They took the rear access stairs to the parking lot and were quickly on the road. “I’ll have to stop for gas,” he said looking at the gauge. 

“That’s good, we can get some snacks while we’re there.”

When they parked under the canopy of gas pump number seven, Bane handed Elka a fifty-dollar bill for the gas and snacks. “Do I need to be concerned about you going in there alone?”

“No,” she said without a quaver in her voice. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, would you like anything in particular.”

“Yes,” he said and put the pump into the trunk until the fuel started flowing. “Nothing from in there, but I’ll tell you when we’re back on the road.”

“Well that’s mysterious,” she said and slammed the heavy passenger door. Bane watched her go and pulled the ring from his pocket and let it settle in his palm. He had had it professionally cleaned and appraised decades ago and the value was obscene then, he could only imagine how much money was sitting in the center of his palm now. 

Elka returned promptly with a bag filled with soda and bottled water, she had grabbed a variety of shelf stable snacks and whatever fresh fruit she could find. 

She put the receipt and change in the console and cracked open one of the sodas. 

“Got everything you need?”

“I think so,” she said and fastened her seat belt as he pulled onto a side road that eventually merged onto the interstate. 

Bane’s heart gave itself freely to her while Esau and his band of murderous thugs headed in the opposite direction, Bane couldn’t keep from staring at the smooth skin   
on the top of her unburned hand as she gripped the plastic bottle. He kept glancing over to catch a glimpse of the line of her neck, the curve of her earlobe and the small valley created in her collar bones. 

“What’s up?” she asked as she caught him staring at her lips, his eyes memorizing the shape of mouth. 

He cleared his throat, the barest of fluster at being caught staring. “I have something that I would like to give you.”

“What’s that?” she said intrigued at his tone and near nervousness. He remained silent until he could exit the fast-moving multi-lane roadway and pull off onto a shady side-road and put the truck in park. 

Elka watched him shift on the seat and reach into his pants pocket, he paused before he spoke. “Don’t feel you have to say anything, we’ll be driving for a while, so you’ll have some time to think.”

Elka held her breath as he dug deeper in his pocket and dropped the ornate ring into her hand. 

“I’ve been carrying this with me for more than two decades,” he said as her eyes widened at the heavy ring fashioned originally for the empress of a long-forgotten civilization. 

Elka stared down in unashamed awe at the antique ring that gleamed dully even without bright light. 

“This is quite a ring, it’s too much though,” she said entranced by the sharp lines of the brilliant diamonds and rubies nestled in its platinum bed. 

“This ring used to belong to a powerful, beautiful ruler, it needs to be worn again by one of beauty and grace,” Bane whispered as he slipped the ring onto her left   
finger. 

Elka swallowed hard as she stared down at her ring finger which had been naked for only a couple of days. It now wore a ring that belonged to a once powerful empress who had been cut down in war and nearly forgotten by history. 

“It’s too much,” she repeatedly lamely and proceeded to tug it free from her finger. Bane dropped his hands over hers, stopping her movement. “Please don’t take it off, it’s finally found its home.”

Elka kept her eyes firmly focused on the hollow at the base of his throat. He placed the fingertips of one hand under her chin and lifted her gaze to meet his. 

“This ring has been with me all over the globe, from an island in the Indian Ocean to the top of Machu Pichu. But this is its true home,” he whispered as he grasped her left hand and lifted it towards his mouth. He took two large gulps of medicated air and pulled his mask free so he could place a soft kiss on the ring, his lips touching the soft warm skin around the ring. 

“What happens now?” she whispered, the cool ring pressing against her heated skin. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” he chuckled and gently kissed her forehead. Bane returned her serious, searching expression and revised his original answer. “I want you by my side willingly, return my affection, be at my side.”

Elka nodded, “can we talk more about what we both want and expect?”

“Yes, we can talk right now,” he said as he engaged the ignition a single click in order to run the engine and adjusted the vents. He pressed his face to his mask and inhaled deeply to hold off any encroaching discomfort as she spoke on a breathless rush. “I don’t want you to hurt me, put me through deprivation or degradation, forget that I’m a person.”

Before Bane could interject, Elka quickly added. “And I want toiletries and personal care products, be able to bathe daily.”

Bane smirked, “anything else?”

Elka felt her breathing increase under his direct stare. “I don’t want to end up broken and discarded in a ditch.”

Any sarcasm Bane thought immediately fell away as he closed the small distance between them on the bench seat and swept her up in his strong embrace.

“Don’t allow those kinds of thoughts to enter your beautiful brain, don’t allow yourself to think that my touch holds future pain,” he murmured and ran his fingertips through her tangled hair. “I want your heart, your love,” he whispered as he traced his fingertip along the shape of her lips. 

“What else do you want?” she whispered as he lowered his lips to hover over hers. “I want you always by my side,” he muttered and brushed his lips quickly against hers. “I’ll do anything for you if you give me your heart, life and body,” he growled and aggressively pressed his lips to her, Elka moaned as he jabbed his tongue against hers before he groaned and slid back abruptly to behind the steering wheel.

“Are you okay?” she gasped and smoothed her clothing back into place.

Bane shook his head, almost embarrassed he muttered. “I really want to fuck you on that seat, but I’ll never be able to marry you legally or share a life with you as long as your husband is alive, or you’re married.”

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying,” she stammered and sat up straighter.

“Your marriage needs to end, you no longer can be listed as abducted, Calvin would need to agree to the divorce and calling off law enforcement or he will have to die, and you become a widow.”

Elka sniffed hard and blinked, she couldn’t move any further on the seat. “I assume you have an idea to share.”

Bane’s shoulders tension and rigidity eased out of his limbs, “you can call Calvin, say you’re fine, you want a divorce and fresh start, nothing more. He would also need to tell law enforcement that you’re fine, you escaped from your abductor and want to start your life over somewhere else.”

“So, I ran away from Calvin and right into you,” she stated.

Bane slid closer and recaptured her bejeweled left hand, “no,” he said shaking his head adding as he squeezed her hand urgently. “I saved you from the good justice.” 

“You saved me,” Elka whispered as she brought her face close to meet his, the tips of their noses touched. “You swear to keep me safe?”

“Yes,” he growled into her mouth as their lips met.

“I’ll call Calvin when we get settled at our next stop.”

Bane nodded; he stifled a moan at the ache in his cock. Elka watched his obvious discomfort as he settled behind the wheel and adjusted his pants. 

“We don’t have to leave this very minute, we still have ….time.”

Bane smiled at her, lust pushing to the surface of his emotions. “We should probably get going, then you can get to calling Calvin.”

Bane reached for the keys to turn over the engine and was surprised when Elka’s unbandaged hand grabbed the keyring and clutched it tightly in her palm. “’What are you…?” Bane started to say until Elka partially struggled out of her drawstring pants, lace panties and slid closer on the seat to him. “Help me unzip your pants,” she said in a raggedly demanding whisper as she crawled onto his lap and fumbled with the stainless-steel zipper pull of his slacks. 

Bane nodded mutely and freed his aching cock and felt the smooth palm of her hand slide and close around his hard length. They both moaned as she raised up and settled her tight, wet femininity around his rigidity

“Please hold onto me,” she breathed as Bane lifted his hands to settle around the smooth skin of her waist and increased the pressure each time she thrust down on his enthusiastic stiffness. 

Elka rocked her hips as he sheathed her wet intimacy and earned an involuntary gasp from him. “This might not last much longer,” he muttered with an embarrassed chuckle and squeezed the flesh of her hips and thighs as he yanked her body down roughly to meet him. The sexual wet sound of their bodies touching, and their increased breathing were the only sounds in the vehicle. 

Bane felt his pleasure turn into a tight coil, “say you’re all mine,” he demanded as he crushed her body tight. “Tell you me you are only mine,” he groaned as he filled her as much as he could, he shuddered as he felt her internally tighten around his engorged his length.

“I’m all yours,” Elka moaned as her body stretched to accommodate the length of time he pushed himself into her. 

“All mine,” he said on a strangled whisper and lost control over his body as he let his orgasm crash over him.

Elka nodded, “yes,” she whispered and felt the warmth spread deep inside her from where he spilled his seed. He stayed sheathed inside her until his cock had grown completely flaccid and slid from her. 

“Thank you,” Bane said after she had climbed off his lap and he helped her slip back into her clothes. 

Elka gave him a curious nod as he assisted her slide her feet back into her shoes. “’I was thanking you for the one-sided pleasure, I will repay you later,” he added with a wink.

Elka ducked her head initially and fought a blush, “you’re welcome and thank you in advance for your repayment.”

Bane chuckled and stared at the time on the radio face. “It’ll be getting dark if we leave now and drive straight, you up for a while in the truck?”

Elka nodded as he adjusted the mirrors, “let me know when you need a break,” he murmured as stopped at the four-way intersection at the bottom of the deserted road. 

Bane handed her the burner phone, “call Calvin and tell him you’re fine, you want a divorce.”

The tension and rigidity eased out of his limbs as she immediately began tapping out Calvin’s number.

Elka’s hand shook as she cradled the phone in the crook of her arm and dialed with her good hand. Her thighs shook she felt lingering jolts of pleasure from her intimate center.

She blew out a sharp breath as the phone rang twice before it was answered. 

Elka felt her breath catch at the sound of her husband’s voice. “Justice Green.”

“Hello Cal,” Elka said cautiously.

She only heard Calvin’s breathing for a few beats and just when she was going to say his name again, he spoke.

“Elka where are you? Are you okay? I thought you were fucking dead. What happened? Wh…?”

Elka cut off his litany of questions, “Cal I’m okay, I hitchhiked out of town for a while after those guys from the bank left me in a ditch. I discovered I need a break; I’m not holding on to things well right now and I’d rather get ahead of the storm. I’m sorry for the abruptness of everything and making people worry.”

“Elka are you on something? Are you intoxicated? Do you know how many people are looking for you?”

“No, Cal, I’m not on drugs. I just needed some time to think and realize that I want a divorce, we shouldn’t be together anymore.”

Calvin scoffed, “Elka please, tell me where you are, I’ll send a car and call Dr. Kirk, he’ll have something to help you relax.”

Elka interrupted him, “shut up Calvin, I don’t love you and you don’t love me. Give me access to my money, you can have everything else. Call the police and say you were just embarrassed about a divorce with your politics and campaign run.”

Calvin was seething and silent as Elka continued. “Write me a check Calvin and then you can fill the house with your courthouse whores.”

“Cal?”

“Fine Elka, whatever you want, I’ll get some money together for you and get a hold of the investigating detective, call me in a couple days.”

“Thank you, Cal,” Elka said and was ready to end the call when Cal started stammering. 

“El, El wait, are you still there?”

“Yes Cal, I’m here.”

“You’re right El, we probably shouldn’t have been together, and I know you never loved me, but you’re a beautiful and lucky prize for whomever you share yourself with.”

Elka’s expression softened, “thanks Cal, I’ll call you in a few days,” she said and ended the call.

She spoke without looking over at him, “I think I’ll call my boss next.”

“Do you and your manager have a good rapport?”

Elka shrugged, “for the most part, I did get invited to her exclusive Christmas party,” she added with a giggle. 

Bane open his mouth to speak and then stopped. 

“What is it?”

He cleared his throat, “have you two ever discussed female problems, depression…”

Elka cut him off, “oh should I tell her I’m sad and have cramps?” she scoffed.

“No,” he said with measured patience. “I merely thought you could ask for some time off, a leave of absence. Assure her that you didn’t disclose any financial information, if she is speaking to you directly, she could calm down the potential investigation that you leaked secure information.”

Elka nodded, considering his words, she wasn’t sure if Trisha would buy a need for a leave of absence, especially the job abandonment. “I’ll try,” Elka said and stared at the keypad. “But I need some water or something first.”

Bane handed her his half- empty bottle of water and she quickly guzzled a quarter of it before she dialed the Reserve’s main number, it rang twice before she reached the call desk. “Trisha Stevenson please,” Elka said to the nasally voiced woman, a few clicks later, Trisha’s phone rang.

“Stevenson.”

“Hi, uh, Trish, it’s Elka, Elka Green.”

“Elka!?! Holy shit, where are you, are you okay?” Trisha shrilled loudly.

“Trish I’m okay really, I kind of lost my mind for a minute. I’m divorcing Calvin. I’m sorry for the abruptness of everything and making people worry, I was hoping I could apply for a leave of absence.”

“Elka I’m so sorry too, your disappearance made some people suspicious, and being no one has heard from you…we need to get the chaos cleaned up, he said you were…” Trisha trailed off.

“What? I’m what?” Elka asked in a high voice.

“I’m sorry Elka, you were fired on the spot. Your last check, unused sick and vacation pay has already been mailed to your house.”

“Oh well, then I guess that’s that.”

“I’m sorry Elka, I really am, I swear I will give you a recommendation letter or verbal referral.”

“Thanks Trisha, it was nice working with you.”

“It was truly my pleasure, good luck.” 

The call ended, and Elka set the flimsy phone aside. “Well there’s no job, so nothing to worry about there.”

“Are you okay?” Bane asked in a gentle tone and rested his large hand on top of her thigh.

Elka shook her head and nodded. “I’m not sure yet,” she said honestly.

“That’s understandable,” he said and added. “Anyone you think you should call? Someone close?” 

Elka thought about that, there were co-workers but no genuine friends. She shook her head and gave a sad laugh, “there’s no one I’m real close to. If I’ve been fired since the start and no one has heard from me, assumptions and rumors have already prevailed, and I’ll just muck it up and get upset with what I’ll probably hear.”

Bane watched her press the button to scan radio stations until a classic rock station filled the truck. “This is best, a clean break, no loose ends that I can think of. You’ll need to make some calls too,” she added.

Bane nodded and glanced at the dashboard clock, “I’ll call them in a few hours, the sun will up there then.”

“Do you have a lot of people to call?”

Bane regarded her for a moment, “just a few. I need to secure us new identifications, credit cards and other important individual documents. A different vehicle also.”

As Bane merged onto the fast-moving interstate, Elka adjusted volume of the ultimate classic rock song and settled back against the seat. He glanced over at her and smiled to see her lip-syncing the lyrics. 

As they proceeded north in comfortable silence, hours in the wrong direction, Esau and four of the other mercenaries continued to track the phone Bane had tucked into the big rig. The dangerous men were fully armed and one of the Russian men pressed the accelerator to the floor and urged the vehicle to move faster. Esau kept his phone close; he had posted a reward for information on Bane and his monetary whore on the dark channels of the web. There were now a lot more eyes that could potentially spot Bane and Elka. 

As the fearsome men continued in the wrong direction, at the penthouse, Justice Calvin Green stared at his phone. “Should I be worried or just call the detective and say all is well?” He was conflicted and found himself leaning to cutting Elka a check and going their own ways, it would be so easy to call the accountant and move funds   
around. 

Calvin set down his phone and nearly filled a high-ball glass with an extra-dry martini, he was generous with his olives and settled back on the designer sofa. 

As he tried to decide what to do next and steadily drained his glass, Bane turned the heater on the lowest setting and glanced over at her as she stared out the window. 

“Do you need it warmer?” he asked as his fingertips hovered over the matte black plastic knob.

Elka turned towards him and gave him a gentle smile, “this is fine.”

“Feel free to nap, we’ll be on the road for a while.”

“I’m okay for now, where are we headed next?”

Elka opened a fresh bottle of water as Bane told her about the sleepy town that was their destination. 

“There’s not much to do there but it’s quiet and isolated.”

As the miles passed under the heavy tires, Esau and his dangerous companions all gave guttural shouts of homicidal anticipation when the flashing beacon of Bane’s cell phone came to a standstill on the screen of the square tracker. Esau glanced at the odometer; they were less than one hundred miles from the now stationary red dot that was supposed to represent Bane and his financial whore.


	12. Something in the Air

As Esau and the men closed the distance between themselves and the still, unmoving red dot, Elka stared down at the new ring, she turned her left palm over on her lap and stared at the heavy ring on her fourth finger.

He snuck a peek over at her as she scrutinized the ring. 

Bane spoke over the radio, “how’s your hand?”

“It hurts some, but I put a fresh bandage on it earlier.”

He turned the volume of the radio down before speaking. “What kind of house would you like to live in eventually?”

“I’d like a place with some acreage. I’ve always wanted a big garden, those don’t work well in a penthouse,” she added. She opened her mouth to continue and instead of words, a giggle slipped from between her lips. 

Bane watched her cover a smile, “don’t do that,” he whispered as he reached over and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “What made you smile?”

“It just sounds unbelievable; it doesn’t seem like it can be real.”

“It will be,” he said strongly and closed his hand over hers, adding with a gentle squeeze. “I will do anything to ensure your happiness.”

Elka turned the radio volume back up to a comfortable level as they continued to drive for hours. While the odometer counted the passing mileage, Esau and his armed men parked their bulky, gas guzzling SUV fifty yards from the still stationary red dot on the planted GPS tracker. 

The men communicated a plan before slipping silently from the large vehicle and closing in on the parked semi-truck. The driver of the truck was off getting a blowjob from a toothless tweaker who hung out around the truck stop. 

Esau moved in first and the rest of the men advanced towards the rear of the truck. An ex-military man with long hair in a braid that fell to the middle of his back, moved past Esau to cut the heavy steel lock on the cargo doors. 

The dangerous man with the beautiful hair severed the sturdy lock, he didn’t see the thin wire that Bane had wound surreptitiously around the lock’s metallic loop. The severing of the grey wire activated the detonation of a solid pound of C-4 that Bane had crudely mashed until it looked like a lumpy potato. The C-4 rapidly decomposed and released an abundance of nitrogen and carbon oxide that wiped out the men’s lives with its undiscriminating explosive touch. 

Hours in the other direction the hotel finally came into view. Elka let out a relieved sigh that he heard when he cut the engine.

She felt his hand come to rest on her thigh and looked over to find his eyes on her face. 

“Are you okay?”

Elka nodded and shook her head, “yes, fine. I’m tired and hungry and would really like to take a bath.”

Bane squeezed the top of her thigh as he turned the engine over again and backed the SUV into a spot at the rear of the lot. 

She watched him pull a few crisp bills from the vehicle’s console. “I need you to go reserve the room, this place doesn’t take credit cards, there’s even still a handwritten ledger.”

Elka looked around the dingy lot, noticing a lot of dry rot, sagging roof and an unkempt exterior. 

She smoothed her hair back as she pushed open the door and made her way across the dusty lot. She could feel his eyes on her back the entire way.

Elka was able to check in with a woman that couldn’t have been a day older than 150 years old and had such an advanced state of cataracts, that her pupils were nearly swallowed up by the milky spill of white. 

She paid cash for two nights, realizing she had neglected to find out how long he wanted to stay. “Two nights is a safe bet,” she thought.

As Elka returned to the car, hours away in the truck stop parking lot, the sloppy trucker blowjob was interrupted as the C-4 reached its peak level of velocity and slammed into the armed men. 

Esau and his brothers-in-arms were completely disarticulated. Many hours later, the medical examiner would have the anatomical challenge of matching up the limbs and building bodies from the burnt pile of remains.

Some of the extremities were so burnt, they resembled firewood when stacked for transport. 

As the charred human remains were loaded into vinyl body bags, back in the SUV in the rundown hotel’s parking lot, Elka watched Bane slip his mask off for the walk to   
their ground level room in case any unwanted eyes were drawn to his masked, hulking form. 

The room was plain but clean, it boasted a faded comforter slung over a full-sized bed. Elka peeked into the bathroom, relieved to find a small, cramped tub, but still a tub she could fill with hot soapy water. 

She stretched her arms high overhead and yawned deeply as she walked around the small room, her legs tight and uncomfortable from too long in the car.

Bane stepped in front of where she was walking circles in the room and swept her up in his embrace, being mindful of her hand. 

He captured her lips with his and cut off her startled gasp as she felt her feet leave the floor. 

“What was that for?” she asked with a flutter and smoothed her clothes back into place when he set her down. 

“No reason,” he said and brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear, letting his fingertips linger before he added. “Food or bath first?” 

“Food please,” she said with potent relief. “I want pancakes for dinner and enough coffee to fill a pool.”

“There’s a diner right next door, you’ll need to make the trip on your own. Will you be okay doing that?”

Elka nodded and watch him retrieve another bill from his jacket. 

She slipped on a heavier coat and closed the room door behind her. 

The diner had a single glass door for the entrance and had the hours painted in a garish red. A bell dinged over her head as she yanked open the door and was met by a waitress with a rectangular name tag that read Sonya.

Elka briefly glanced at the menu and found a special that included pancakes, she ordered two along with coffee. 

She thanked the waitress and asked for a coffee while she waited. She took a sip of the piping hot French roast from the mug. Elka tore open several pink packets of an artificial sweetener and stirred it into her coffee. 

Back in the hotel room, Bane hated that he couldn’t accompany Elka to the diner but being in public was an increased risk by his sheer appearance not to mention the amount of eyes Talia had peppered around the globe. 

Bane also needed her out of earshot for the phone call he was about to make.

He knew that Talia would’ve been notified about losing Esau and the small clutch of men in the fiery blaze. Bane also knew that Talia would immediately turn to Barsad for fatal assistance.

He affixed his mask back into place before he activated one of the additional burner phones and dialed Barsad.

Bane listened as the call seemed to take too long to connect. Barsad picked up with a sleepy grunt after seven crackly rings. 

“Brother,” Bane said to Barsad’s incoherent greeting. 

Barsad was instantly awake when Bane’s distinct musical tone sounded through the poor connection. 

Bane heard a lot of commotion on Barsad’s end before he spoke again.

“I’ve been dispatched to neutralize you and the woman,” Barsad stated. 

“Yes, that would be the proper course of action.”

“I will not be able to find you.”

Both men were silent for a while, their shared camaraderie meaning more at the moment in time and space over Talia’s psychotic and misguided totalitarian regime. 

“Gratitude brother,” Bane finally said before adding in a musically conspiratorial tone. “There’s something else.”

“End her?”

“Yes.”

“Done. Anything else?”

On the other end of the phone, Barsad nodded wordlessly as Bane gave him orders that were rooted solely in toxic jealousy. Barsad repeated the penthouse suite   
address back to Bane.

“I’m indebted,” Bane said.

“No, you’re not, you’re out of the Pit for good. Be well brother.”

Both men ended the call without another exchanged syllable. 

Bane stared down at the cheap phone and its oval plastic buttons, the display screen remained blank, save for the time in green digits. 

He slipped out of his heavy coat as Elka sat in the diner and rubbed her eyes, the fatigue crawling through her limbs as she waited for the food. Elka could’ve folded her arms and fallen asleep. Sonya returned with a plastic bag within twelve minutes and assured Elka there were creamers, utensils and a variety of condiments tucked into the bag. 

Elka thanked her and balanced the bag and drink tray as she made the short return walk to their hotel room. She found Bane sitting on the edge of the bed, his coat slung over one of the room’s mismatched chairs. 

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted anything, so I ordered you pancakes too,” she said as he stood and took the bag and tray from her hands. 

Elka slipped out of her coat and kicked off her shoes as she dug through the bag for one of the Styrofoam containers. 

She waterboarded her pancakes with sweet, sticky syrup and smeared a fat glob of butter over the fluffy round stack.

Bane watched Elka dump a handful of miniature creamers into her coffee.

She looked over at him unexpectedly and caught him staring. “I forgot to mention, I booked the room for two nights.” 

“No more than that for the sake of keeping in motion.”

Elka nodded and sipped at her coffee. She shifted on the uncomfortable chair and her movement caused the light to spill across her face in a way that pulled Bane back to his time of turmoil and pain in the Pit. 

Elka felt the weight of his gaze before she turned to meet his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked with concern creasing his forehead as he rose to his feet and began walking towards her. 

Bane nodded wordlessly as he knelt to his knees in front of her. She felt her breath catch in her throat as he lifted a large hand to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing the outline of her full lips before he spoke on a melodic rasp. 

“I’ve lived in a world composed of darkness and bitter turmoil before I met you.” His eyes were on her face, but his mind reminded him of the hope of looking up at the sunlight streaming in through Pena Dura. 

Elka danced her fingertips along the straps of his mask and fumbled the clasps until she could tug the titanium covering his face free. She traced her fingertips along the visible scars of his face and strong line of his jaw. 

As Elka leaned down and pressed her lips against Bane’s, hundreds of miles away, in the corner office of the East Coast penthouse, Calvin was on the phone with his accountant and getting money together for Elka. Every time his phone rang, he expected her to be on the other end of the call, telling him where to send her money. 

Calvin fumbled for his phone when it rang sharply. It wasn’t Elka. It was her boss, Trisha Stevenson. 

As she waited for Calvin to answer, Trisha still couldn’t shake the feeling that Elka was in some kind of trouble. 

“This is Calvin Green.”

“Hello, Mr. Green, this is Trisha Stevenson. I worked with Elka at the Reserve.”

“Hello Trisha, please call me Calvin, I didn’t believe we’ve met but Elka speaks of you fondly. What can I help you with?”

“I don’t have anything to base this on but when I spoke to Elka, she didn’t seem like herself. I’m worried….”

Calvin interrupted her, “Trisha, thank you for your concern. Please keep this between you and I, Elka and I are getting a divorce and she is moving out of the city. It’s still not public knowledge.”

“Oh, Calvin, I’m so sorry,” Trisha rambled. “I had no idea.”

“It’s for the best,” Calvin said and tried to inject hopelessness to his tone. “We tried to make it work but this is the best chance for either of us to have a healthy existence. I don’t have a forwarding address for her yet, but I will send it to you as soon as I receive it.”

“Thank you, Calvin.”

“Thank you for your concern Trisha,” Calvin said in a businesslike tone and ended the call. 

After Calvin ended the call, Trisha had stared at the phone, she still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was amiss. She pulled up her phone’s contacts, 

“Should I call Elka?” 

“No, I’m going to give it a few days and then I’ll call Elka just to make sure she’s okay. Calvin didn’t sound ruffled in the slightest,” she said to herself out loud in a stern tone.

As Trisha tried to shove her concern to the back burner, in another part of Gotham City, Barsad knocked on the smooth double doors of the luxury condo that Talia leased under the name of the glamorous Miranda Tate.

Talia yanked open the doors, anticipating Barsad’s visit after an earlier telephone call. 

Barsad kept his smile to himself as his eyes fell upon Talia’s smug face. Her pathological narcissism kept her from hearing past Barsad’s lies through the phone line. 

“Well?!?” Talia demanded and practically stomped her feet when she didn’t see Barsad dragging a manacled Bane behind him. “Did you kill them both?

Barsad nodded as Talia shut the door behind him and pointed at the kitchen island and its tall upholstered bar stools.

“Where are the bodies?” 

Barsad remained wordless as Talia poured two healthy squat glasses of bourbon. 

“Where?” Talia repeated as she set the nearly full glass in front of him.

“Under the bridge, they’ll never be found.”

Talia took a long swallow from her glass, regarding Barsad over the rim. “Take me to them.”

Barsad pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times before turning the phone towards her. 

He held the phone too far away for her to discern the pictures clearly which made her automatically lean closer.

Talia never saw her death coming as Barsad let the phone clatter to the counter as he simultaneously shot his hand out to close in the luxurious fall of her silken hair. 

He closed his hand into a fist until the tension made her arch her back, causing her neck to lengthen, the skin pulled tight over her rapidly pounding carotid artery.   
Talia’s arterial and venous intersection was exactly what Barsad only had eyes for. 

He quickly dragged a sharp, curved blade across her neck, parting the smooth flesh, coaxing her blood to spout with no sign of stopping until she was drained dry.   
She succumbed to cardiac death in less than thirty seconds.

Barsad released her hair and her beautiful corpse thudded once on the quartz countertop before falling to the floor and landing in her spilled blood. 

He stared down at her a beat before retrieving his phone and dropping it back in his pocket. Barsad wiped both sides of the blood stippled blade on the thigh of his well-worn cargo pants before leaving the condo.

The luxury floor plan that reeked of money now began to compete with the metallic, coppery scent that began to fill the air from Talia’s copious blood spill. 

As Talia’s body was left with the company of Venetian tile, hundreds of miles away in the small hotel room, Bane rose to his feet and crushed her against his body. 

“Let’s go get to that bath,” he murmured musically as he shifted his grip and carried her into the cramped bathroom.


	13. The End of Needing to Run

Elka nodded as he squeezed her hand, his strong fingers kneading her skin. 

She watched him turn towards the bathroom and remained rooted in place as he tugged on her hand. 

He turned back towards her, “are you okay?”

Elka nodded and began to unbutton her ribbed thermal long-sleeved top, “there’s no rush to get there,” she murmured. Bane felt a rush of adrenalin spread from his brain and leech its chilly fingers through his central nervous system as she continued peeling off her clothes.

Elka watched as he slipped out of his charcoal-grey shirt that fit like a second skin. He let his shirt fall to the floor to land with his discarded jacket. She moved then, suddenly, her fingers driven by anticipation as she unzipped his pants and soon, they fell down his hips to land softly on the floor. Elka licked her upper lip deliberately and stepped close to Bane, she let her hand trace his growing length and closed her hand around his rigidity, squeezing lightly. 

Bane murmured something unintelligibly against her ear and pulled her towards the bed. He sat on the side of the bed and pulled her against his warm heavily muscled chest and torso. She took in a sharp breath as he trailed his hands up the outside of her thighs, over her hips and rested on her waist.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, mesmerized by the illumination of the juxtaposition of her soft curves and hard lines of her body. “Come here,” Bane growled and yanked her towards him until she crawled onto him, ending up with her legs on either side of his thighs. He ran his hands up and down her naked back as she scooted closer to him. Before Elka knew what was happening, Bane pulled her tight against him and shifted them on the bed and she soon found herself lying on her back, looking up into his face. 

Bane supported most of his weight with one arm and Elka responded by parting her legs further until he was pressed up against her body, shivering with anticipation at the feel of their bodies touching intimately. 

He felt a shiver of anticipation run the length of his body as he slid down in the bed until he could press his lips above her belly button. He licked a warm path along the smooth skin of her belly until she broke out in goosebumps. 

“You’re choosing to share your life with me?” he murmured against her belly as he smoothed a hand up the inside of her thigh. Bane smiled against her bare skin as he felt a shudder run through her body when she felt his tongue trace a warm line towards her intimate femininity. 

“I want you to marry me the day your divorce is final, will you? Will you be my wife?” he added in a choked whisper as he pushed her thighs further apart and teased her wet intimate center with long strokes of his tongue. 

“Yes,” she issued on a strangled moan as Bane slid his large hands up to cup her breasts. “Yes?” he growled against her wet flesh as he felt her nipples harden under his palms.

Elka managed a nod as he slid his tongue inside her smoothly, tasting her intimate center. Her soft moans made his cock ache and he groaned against her sensitive skin.

Bane smiled against her wet flesh as her flesh twitched under his probing tongue. He slid one hand from her thigh down to his hard cock, painfully rigid as each flick of his tongue pushed her closer to explosive ecstasy. He growled against her intimate skin as she began to gasp and buck her hips to meet his buried face.

He stroked the length of his cock in time with her hips as they rose to meet his face, he knew she was as close to coming as he was. “Let go,” he murmured against her wet center and heard her cry out in pleasure before he rose up until he could pull her thighs tight on either side of his hips. Bane reveled in the rapid breathing he coaxed from her as he teased her tight opening with his fingertips.

“Tell me this is what you want,” he said on a groan as he pressed his palm over her rapidly beating heart. “I want you to give me all of yourself,” he whispered lowly and watched her bite her lower lip. 

“I want……this,” she gasped as she felt his eager rigidity press against her inner thigh. 

His eyes seemed to see inside her as he moved his searing gaze across the blush that brightened her cheeks. Bane felt his scrotum lift and tighten against his body as a spark of fire started in his cock’s nerve endings and he let his eyes linger on the hardened peaks of her nipples. 

Bane inhaled deeply, feeling a sudden well of emotions. He was filled with a choking rush of vulnerability, feeling like an overturned turtle with its pale belly exposed, buzzards circling overhead. He felt anger and confusion begin to stomp down the naked defenseless sensation. 

Elka felt his tension like live wires within his arms and his breath hitched as he stared down at her, searching her face as she returned his gaze, a light sheen of sweat across her forehead. She licked her dry lips nervously as she reached down and closed her warm hand around his throbbing cock and watched as his pupils darkened as she guided his hardness to her wet opening.

“Bane,” she whispered and arched her back against him, pressing their bodies closer together. “Please.”

All he heard was her genuine want and need in her voice as he gripped her hips hard. “I thought I could take your heart by force, but now I know I can’t,” he murmured raggedly as he plunged himself deep inside her. “I swear our life together will be a fulfilled one,” he said on a ragged moan and got into an easy rhythm of sliding his rigidity in and out of her. He varied his viselike grip on her hips and bumped her cervix as he sank himself inside of her, forcing a gasp from between her lips. Elka surrendered to pleasure of him plunging himself inside her, their intimate flesh wetly kissing. 

He fucked her sweetly in deep long thrusts, plunging into her until she was breathless.

Elka let herself be engulfed by the sensation of him as he pushed in and out of her. Bane bent her knees and brought them up to his waist as he increased his rhythm as she lifted her pelvis to meet his. There was no sound except for their breathing as he let himself get lost in the feel of her body. He could feel her body tighten around him and he fought for control. 

As she fought her feelings as he filled her, she let her eyes close. “No, stay here with me,” he begged and kept his touch on her chin gently as he slowed the movement of his hips. “There you are,” he whispered heavily as he filled her with impossible slowness, forcing a low moan from between her lips. “Tell me what I’m making you feel,” he ordered with a breathless groan.

“Everything,” Elka admitted lowly and repeated herself quickly when he surprised her with a sudden shift in his rhythm. “Everything,” she gasped as her body fought a plethora of feelings and emotions from want and need to fear and loneliness.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he thought as he sank himself into her fully. Bane kept his eyes on hers as he buried his cock deep inside her, their pubic bones bumping.

Bane was overwhelmed with the feeling of her body gripped tightly around him. Her flesh was smooth under his hands and he wanted to drown in her fully. Elka looked up at him, seeing him for the first time as he filled her intimacy as he moved in and out of her body. His eyes never left hers and she found herself being pulled into the depths of his eyes, drowning in the ocean of pain that he had been swimming in by himself. His past was born in blood and he felt at the moment his orgasm came to fruition that he had found his home. 

Bane gripped her body firmly and pushed his hips up against hers until the waves of ecstasy had finished washing over him. Bane carefully rolled them to the side, still firmly sheathed inside her. After his orgasm ebbed, he pulled out of her and wrapped his arms around her tightly, keeping her pressed up against his naked chest. 

Elka sighed sleepily as Bane kissed his way along the line of her neck and without pausing, continued kissing a path over the bony prominence of her clavicle and pressed his lips on her sternum. She gasped as his mouth found her nipple, which hardened under the deft movement of his lips. Bane kneaded the supple flesh of her breast as she felt his hot breath against her flesh. He trailed his hands down her waist and settled on her hips as he settled behind her and pulled their naked flesh close. 

They sighed simultaneously in contented stereo as he pushed her hair away from the back of her neck and pressed his lips against the base of her skull. 

As they each caught their breath, inhaling and exhaling in the sex-scented air, back in Gotham City, Barsad caught up on a few hours of sleep in the cramped cab of his pick-up truck. He had stopped for a break on his way to pick up some surveillance equipment for Bane’s last orders. 

As Barsad drifted into an exhausted nap, back in the tangled sheets of the hotel bed, Bane’s voice broke the silence. 

“You’re all mine as soon as your divorce is final?”

“Yes,” she breathed within the circle of his arms, Thera was certain she felt him smile against her skin before he tugged the linen up and around them. 

“Thank you,” he whispered and all he let himself feel was her, he allowed himself to get lost in the sight, smell, taste of her before he reluctantly affixed his mask back in place.

They both drifted into an exhausted sleep, locked together, their naked limbs intertwined. 

Bane emerged from their collective dreamless sleep first and felt strands of her hair tickling his nose, he slowly extracted himself from around her and walked softly to the bathroom. When he emerged, she was sitting up and tucking the bed linen around herself.

“How’d you sleep?” Elka asked and covered a yawn.

“Very well,” he murmured, his gaze grew heavy and coaxed a warm flush to her skin. “And yourself?” he added as he returned to the bed and slid close to her side. 

“Fairly well,” she said as he pressed a piece of paper into her palm. 

“What’s this?” she asked as she stared down at the multiple number sequences he had written in blue ink. 

“That’s the routing and account number of a savings account where we’re headed, the Good Justice can transfer your money there.”

Elka scanned the numbers as Bane added quickly. “The account only has your name on it.”

She raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise, “only me?”

“It’s your money,” Bane stated factually, “and it is staying your money.”

Elka nodded and slipped the torn paper in her oversized handled bag after she glanced at the bedside clock. “I’ll call him later; he won’t be up yet,” she added as she   
started to climb out of the bed. 

Bane nodded, “would you like me to reheat you some coffee?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m going to clean up first,” she said.

Bane traced his fingertips along the line of her jaw. “It’ll be waiting for you,” he murmured. 

He watched her gather a couple fresh towels and close the bathroom door behind her.

Bane regarded the closed door for a moment before sorting through a battered duffle bag to find something to change into. 

Behind the bathroom door, Elka regarded her reflection and wet the end of a washcloth to rub under her eyes before she cranked the tub’s faucet to hot. She had been thinking of a shower and then glanced at the deep porcelain tub and the growth of hair under her armpits. She set a cheap razor on the edge of the tub as it filled and dumped a few capfuls of a rose-pomegranate bubble bath under the flowing water. 

Elka caught her nudity in the mirror’s reflection. She paused at the sight of her naked state, her eyes running over the bruises, abrasions and oval marks from his fingerprints that were painted across her warm skin. She squeezed her eyes shut as fatigue and repressed achiness caught up to her, a sudden deluge of emotions threatened to smother her, she felt hot tears fill her eyes and run down her face. 

“I’m going to miss seeing Albert and his personalized coffee, he’s what my dad would’ve been like,” she thought and wiped away a couple tears. 

She flinched when he quietly opened the door, also suddenly assessing her bare skin, the imperfections on her flesh from his hands. “I’m sorry,” he muttered as he started to leave and pull the door shut.

“Don’t leave,” she called before the door slammed shut. Bane froze, able to see her through the remaining space in the doorway. “Please come back in here.”

“Why do you want me to do that?” he whispered, vulnerability staining each syllable. 

“Because someday you’re going to be my husband and we’re going to have a life together.”

Bane pushed open the doorway but kept his body outside, she continued in his silence. “You can and should see everything, the good and the ugly,” she said and dropped her hands that she had been crossing over her breasts. 

“Nothing about you is ugly,” he growled as he walked towards her, slipping off his own clothes until they were both completely bare to each other’s eyes and brushed his fingertips against her lips. 

Bane held her eyes captive as he easily scooped her up in his powerful arms, soon he was holding her as though she was already his bride and lowered them both into the steaming bubble bath. The translucent bubbles popped when they made contact with their bare skin, the warm air held the heady scent of roses. Bane settled against the tub, the back of his neck resting on the curved edge as Elka shifted in his arms until she could recline against him. 

He dropped his arms around her, his hands resting under the water against her belly. 

As they soaked in the hot, scented water and Bane pulled her wet, naked body closer, hours away in the posh Gotham City penthouse, Calvin ended the call with the detective in charge of Elka’s supposed abduction case. Calvin profusely apologized for wasting the detective’s time and energy and casually offered season tickets behind the plate if the detective wanted to root for the home team in style for the season. 

As Calvin got into a pressed dress shirt, the not so naturally blonde file clerk slept under the designer duvet cover, Bane and Elka eventually got out of the cooling soapy water and crawled back between the cotton layers of the bed’s simple linen. 

Bane slept better than he had the entirety of his life, for the first time, no one was in pursuit of him and Talia was dead. She would no longer be able to rail against him with threats and heartless emasculating taunts. 

There was no longer a ticking clock, reminding him to keep moving. No urgency to flee, escape or never stop running. 

He was free.

She was free.

They were free.

Three Months Later

Downtime Gotham City was buzzing with overzealous conservative pride after the polls closed and news stations were preparing to call the winners. 

The election ended with red, white, and blue balloons being dropped on the newly elected Senator Calvin Green. Standing next to him was a striking redhead with a pronounced little belly. She at one point had been an intern in the Justice’s office and soon was working overtime for all hours of the night and was set to deliver a summer baby with the good justice. 

As Calvin adjusted his flag tie and smiled a wide bleached set of teeth at his delegates, many states away, Bane walked across a lush, fertilized lawn and through a massive garden to the sturdy chicken coop that Elka had disappeared into. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon and it was chilly enough to see your breath.   
Bane leaned against the rough wood doorway of the coop. “You’re going to get cold without a coat,” he said to Elka’s back.

She turned towards him holding four fresh light brown chicken eggs. “These are still warm,” Elka said and let herself be swept up in the sand colored afghan he had stretched open in his embrace. 

“I’ll make breakfast if you get the coffee started,” she added as he closed his arms around her.

Bane pulled her tight enough for her breath to leave her chest. “I started the coffee before I came out here, so I would have more time for this.”

Elka barely had a chance to take a breath before his lips descended on hers. He felt the chill from the brisk air produce a shiver throughout her body and he pulled the afghan tighter around her. “Let’s get back inside.” 

She nodded in agreement as they climbed the deck stairs and she warmed up by the fireplace that dominated the living room wall.

As Elka rubbed her hands together by the crackling logs, Bane brought her a mug brimming with the near scalding Columbian house blend. 

He waited until she took a few too hot sips before speaking. “Are you happy here with me?”

She turned to him and gently set her free hand on his forearm. “Yes, are you?” she asked quickly.

Bane tugged her mug from her hand and set it on the mantle. He pulled her into his arms, enveloping her in his formidable frame. She felt fragile encircled by him and let her head rest on his chest. Elka closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat strongly under her ear. When he spoke, his voice rumbled through her chest and teased her ear as the sound amplified and flowed into her. “I’ve never felt this way before. While you were still asleep this morning, a courier dropped off your finalized divorce papers. You are no longer attached to Calvin.”

“We need to celebrate tonight,” she practically squealed, and he let her worm out of his grip and throw her arms around his neck.

Elka had left the television on but the volume a near-whisper when she went to collect the morning eggs. She turned her face to the other side as she pressed her ear against Bane’s chest and caught sight of the Breaking News logo flash across the screen and the brunette news anchor with the piercing blue eyes and basketball-sized tits began addressing the camera.

Elka pushed away from Bane when images of the newly elected Senator Calvin Green and her freshly ex-husband appeared on the screen.  
Bane froze when his eyes followed her gaze. 

He already knew the content of the breaking news story. 

Elka fumbled for the remote and pressed the grey volume button until the serious tone of the buxom anchor filled the room, competing only with the crackling of the logs in the fireplace and her heartbeat which began to pound in her ears. 

Elka watched the news anchor’s glossy red lips form words, her pink tongue appearing briefly as she overly annunciated her words.

“The following footage may be too graphic for some viewers. You’re seeing video from the rally of the newly elected Senator Calvin Green, also a Justice for Gotham City’s high court. Justice Green was assassinated on the steps of the Capitol Building as he addressed his supporters. The Gotham City police department has set up an anonymous tip line for any information.”

Elka turned off the television and turned towards Bane, her expression neutral and unreadable as she met his eyes. 

“Are you responsible for that?” she asked as she gestured towards the television with the plastic remote control.

Bane regarded her silently, not needing to qualify her asked and answered question. “When I walked through the garden this morning, I noticed there are a lot of tomatoes ready to be harvested. There’ll be too many to use at once,” he stated instead.

Elka held his eyes and was quiet for so long Bane began to feel a spike of worry pierce the pericardial sac containing his rapidly pounding heart. He thought about the phone call he had received right before the courier arrived with her divorce papers. 

He had answered Barsad’s call with greedy anticipation of words that made his hands shake. 

“It’s done,” Barsad led with and described staring down the scope of the rifle and aiming the red bead at the center of Calvin’s privileged forehead. He squeezed the trigger and watched the Good Justice’s cranium explode and paint the cement with the colorful enthusiasm of a Jackson Pollack painting. 

“May you finally find peace brother,” Barsad said before he ended the last verbal exchange he would ever have with Bane. 

Bane could breathe again when Elka turned off the television and gave him a small smile.

“It sounds like spaghetti night then; I’ll make extra sauce and freeze it.”


End file.
